Jewish faculty and students at the University of Michigan sent two letters to University President Santa Ono Wednesday afternoon condemning the exploitation of antisemitism as a means to attack higher education.
The letters, signed by nearly 300 faculty members and 100 students as of publication, express a joint concern that beliefs protected by the first amendment that are opposed by the Trump administration have been falsely labeled as antisemitism and used to justify the harassment, doxxing and punishment of members of communities of various universities. The student letter denounced the weaponization of antisemitism and wrote the practice could paint the Jewish community as repressive.
“When antisemitism is misrepresented as speech the government dislikes, it loses its meaning and causes real instances of antisemitism to be taken less seriously — further endangering Jewish students,” the student letter read. “The Trump administration is cynically making Jews the face of authoritarian repression and diluting antisemitism’s meaning through politically motivated accusations. These actions make Jews less safe.”
The letters come at a time when multiple universities across the country have been criticized by the federal government for their handling of alleged antisemitism on campus. A March 10 letter from the Department of Education, sent to the University of Michigan and 59 other institutions, described the government’s concern about protecting Jewish students in higher education.
On March 7, three days before the release of the letter, the Trump administration pulled $400 million in federal grants and contracts from Columbia University, claiming the institution had failed to address purported antisemitism. Columbia University has since complied with the administration’s demands, which include reassigning leadership of the Middle East, South Asian and African Studies department and hiring new security officers with the ability to arrest students.
Sean Johnson, an assistant professor of astronomy who signed the faculty letter, said in an interview with The Michigan Daily she thinks the actions taken against other institutions are a cause for concern at the University.
“A lot of the motivation for this (letter) came from seeing the Trump administration’s directions and orders essentially to Columbia University under the guise of supposedly fighting antisemitism,” Johnson said. “We have similar departments at this university, and there’s a long history of Jewish students, academics, professors, researchers, etc. being targeted by state governments like this.”
The letters provide Ono with five to six recommendations, including urging him to defend every University community member’s right to free speech, even if he may disagree with their opinions.
Law professor Richard Primus is an advisor to Protect Democracy, a nonprofit and nonpartisan group which has brought a lawsuit against the Trump administration for its cuts to Columbia University. Primus told The Daily he believes protecting and preserving free speech should be prioritized.
“Free speech and civil rights and the rule of law are enormously important, and most of us who grew up in the United States take them for granted, but they can’t be taken for granted,” Primus said. “It’s not normal in human history to have societies that respect things like that. It is unusual, and it can collapse. We are now at a moment where it’s in danger of collapsing, and I do not think the Trump administration cares sincerely about antisemitism.”
The University’s reaction to protests has been criticized by numerous activist groups on campus who claim the institution has limited free speech by taking disciplinary action against student protesters and changing disciplinary processes in the Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities in July 2024. The student letter asks Ono to reinstate the student hearing board and appeals board to the SSRR.
Primus stressed the need for protests to abide by set policies and rules, but also said if demonstrators are within those rules, their right to free speech should be protected by the University.
“The right to protest isn’t a right to disrupt classes or harass people or bring a halt to the normal operations of the University,” Primus said. “That’s important, but when people protest in ways protected by the Constitution, they have to be free from retaliation by the government, even if their speech is unpopular. If we lose that, we may never recover it.”
The faculty letter also asked Ono to meet with a small group of educators to discuss concerns regarding academic free speech in the classroom. Johnson said he worries pressure from the Trump administration has affected faculty members’ ability to discuss certain topics in their courses, including University departments that house Jewish faculty.
“I hope that he at least takes a meeting with a small group of us to listen more directly and so that we can ensure that he understands that the lack of action by this university is already making a lot of professors and graduate student instructions reevaluate what they can teach in the classroom,” Johnson said. “We have already lost academic freedoms because the University is not willing to stand up. … Not standing up and following these recommendations means that we no longer have confidence that the University will protect its core mission.”
Johnson said recent cuts to the diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives including the Office of DEI last Thursday would worsen the state of academic freedom at the University.
“ODEI also ran a lot of faculty-facing things and the letter from Ono makes clear that those are on the chopping block,” Johnson said. “The sorts of things that were faculty-facing were often things like, ‘How do you facilitate difficult conversations in the classroom, talking through difference?… I think we’re going to see a muzzling of a large fraction of students once you feel that their views are not supported by the administration, because the faculty will be less equipped to help them feel comfortable in speaking.”
Both letters urge Ono not to cooperate with immigration authorities’ attempts to deport or harass campus community members due to their opinions unless required by law. These suggestions come after the high-profile arrest of activist Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University alum who helped organize pro-Palestine protests, by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in March despite holding a valid green card. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that the State Department has revoked 300 or more visas of students who participate in campus protests. On Tuesday, Tufts University doctorate student Rumeysa Ozturk was detained by plainclothes officers and saw her F-1 student visa revoked in part for writing a pro-Palestine op-ed in March 2024.
LSA senior Helen Shanker, who signed the student letter, stressed the importance of the letter’s recommendations and told The Daily she believes pro-Palestine activists, in particular those with an immigrant status, are at a heightened risk of being unjustly targeted for their political views.
“We’re seeing an increased risk of specifically pro-Palestine protesters of Color under an immigrant status being attacked and targeted under this administration from ICE authorities,” Shanker said. “I think that’s an incredibly important thing to be thinking about and urging this University and other institutions to be detaching their ties from those really harmful authorities that are just really horribly impacting so many students who have exercised their First Amendment right.”
Both letters ask Ono to actively reject the idea that pro-Palestine opinions and criticism of Israel can be equated to antisemitism. Shanker said this issue could harm student protesters as well as prevent real antisemitism from being identified.
“It’s just very frustrating because so many of the folks charged with felonies or have been receiving legal repercussions from organizing for Palestinian freedom and Palestinian liberation are Jewish,” Shanker said. “They know — I’m Jewish — we know what antisemitism looks like. And we know when it comes up, and we know how to identify it, and we also know what injustice looks like. Those are two very different things. Fighting for Palestinian liberation is not antisemitic, and I think that that rhetoric is just incredibly harmful, especially to Jewish people.”
Primus said in response to the federal government’s weaponization of antisemitism, institutions should refuse to bend to the demands of the Trump administration to preserve the United States’ academic excellence.
“They need to work together,” Primus said. “American universities produce science and technology and ideas and people that make the world so much more worth living in. (The US’s) leading universities are the best universities in the world. … The universities need confidently to remind the public of this fact and they need to live up to their own best traditions. They have to understand that there might be some pain, but if they cave for fear of the pain they will have a long time to regret it.”
Daily News Editor Marissa Corsi can be reached at macorsi@umich.edu.
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