After Gaza solidarity encampments spread ferociously across the nation in May 2024 — where students protested their universities’ investments in the genocide in Gaza and the bloody occupation of Palestine — universities nationwide readied themselves for a new year of anticipated protest. Instead of enabling the First Amendment, college administrators prepared themselves by hiring an influx of private security guards to man the campus and changing internal discipline procedures to make it easier to unilaterally target prominent student activists and pro-Palestine organizations. Instead of outright banning pro-Palestine organizations based on their speech, as many private universities have, the University of Michigan has used the guise of proceduralism to ban SAFE for two years for selling baked goods on the Diag. Instead of upholding its own supposed principle of institutional neutrality (which truly is not even possible), University President Santa Ono is running around New York seeking favor from Zionists as he decries his students and sloppily insinuates Foreign Terrorist Organizations fund them. Instead of talking to student organizers, the University Board of Regents, which financially backed the current Michigan Attorney General’s political run for her seat, effectively deployed Nessel to prosecute encampment protesters. The University’s cowardice is just one example as universities nationwide sacrifice their students under the guise of curbing hate speech and protecting the supposed legitimacy of their institution.
Now, the majority of campus is correctly pissed at the administration’s unprompted revocation of diversity, equity and inclusion. In the email citing the Fourth Circuit (All constitutional claims in Michigan, including those relating to all its universities, are governed by the Sixth Circuit, not the Fourth), the University weakly buckled under the initial pressure of a New York Times anti-DEI article and allowed President Donald Trump’s regime to end the fight so many students helped lead in trying to make the University more inclusive. Receiving less outrage — and wrongly so — was the University’s email emphasizing that Immigration Customs and Enforcement can comfortably roam our campus. Their only solution was asking students to alert the Division of Public Safety and Security of ICE presence, knowing local law enforcement is a common collaborator with ICE.
Ono and the board have proven time and time again that they lack the backbone to stand for their students, faculty and staff as they repeatedly sacrifice the community’s wellbeing. To make matters worse, it’s entirely accepted with little, if any, pushback as students, faculty and staff overwhelmingly sit idle, watching as powerful administrators gut the institution and harm its students to further a fascist agenda.
As we watch the disappearances of so many student protesters off their campuses and our timelines are filled with plainclothes officers straight-up kidnapping people from their homes and streets for not having the “right” opinion, I can’t help but think of the administrators who allowed this to happen. Their willingness to succumb to Trump’s feeble Department of Education, the Regents’ suppression of speech due to their pre-Trump, naturally leads to the conditions that end even band aid solutions like DEI programs at Michigan after Trump’s election. Moreover, logically, how can we begin to expect the University to take moral actions if it takes our money and invests in deaths abroad? How can we beg for inclusion in an institution that willingly says its students are hatemongers and funded by alleged terrorists? That already deems the harm done to one set of lives worthy of strong moral condemnation and not others? It only follows that Ono, the regents and the University’s institutions are incapable of morally reaching conclusions as they facilitate fascism on our campus, before and during the current Trump presidency.
The solution is quite clear: We as a student body, with our professors, instructors and staff, must not remain silent. It’s maddening that I even have to say this, but it is not enough to post an infographic with a sad emoji as the University crushes DEI and fires members of our communities. We must do more. We must protest and organize against the administrators that so often fail to consider us in their decision-making — from funding the murders of students’ family members to ideologically capitulating to Trump’s brand of white Americana. To succeed, fascism demands silence from dissenters. We must not give it our silence, lest our University continue to facilitate a horrifying agenda both here and abroad.
Eman Naga is a law student and former Michigan In Color Editor. She can be reached at enaga@umich.edu.
The post From DEI to Palestine: The University of Michigan’s choice to sacrifice its students appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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