The University of Michigan chapter of anti-Israel student activist group Students for Justice in Palestine has been suspended for up to two years, according to the club.
The suspension came after an academic year of protests and campus disruptions related to the Israel-Hamas War. According to SJP branch Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE), it is an attempt to silence campus anti-Israel activity.
“This is a clear continuation of admin’s politically motivated attempts to erase the fight for Palestinian liberation from our campus – but the movement is larger than an organization or an individual, and the call for divestment will only grow louder under attack,” SAFE wrote on Instagram. “Our demand is unchanged and we continue undeterred. Until liberation and return.”
SAFE announced a Tuesday meeting with groups including the Transparency, Accountability, Humanity, Reparations, Investment, Resistance (TAHRIR) Coalition; Jewish Voice for Peace UMich; and UMich Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, to discuss how to fight against “repression of pro-Palestine speech and activism.”
The anti-Israel group complained that a student judicial panel found SAFE not responsible for a litany of allegations, including its involvement in a dawn protest in May at the home of UMich Regent Sarah Hubbard.
University decision
A January 16 letter from Associate Vice President and Dean of Students Laura Blake Jones to the Center for Campus Involvement, obtained by the Michigan Daily, detailed that the university had decided to overturn much of the December 13 decision made by the Central Student Judiciary (CSJ) regarding the university’s October complaint against SAFE.
Jones found that SAFE violated safety standards when a group of around thirty masked protesters sounding bullhorns, drumming, and chanting, came to her home and erected tents, placed fake corpses wrapped in bloodied sheets on her lawn, and taped a list of demands to her front door. The protest items were left on Hubbard’s lawn for her to clean up, “including heavy, jagged, and broken items.”
The dean argued, according to Michigan Daily’s letter, that any reasonable person would see the events as a serious threat. While the CSJ questioned whether the behavior should be attributed to SAFE, Jones believed that the protest group had participated and had conceded that its members were present.
SAFE at the time had posted on Instagram that video of the incident tacitly supporting the demonstration, promising “we will continue to protest.” TAHRIR Coalition, which serves as an umbrella group for UMich anti-Israel organizations, responded to Hubbard’s recounting of events on X, saying they would not take “no for an answer,” and to “stop complaining on Twitter and come to the encampment to actually negotiate.”
Jones also determined that SAFE had violated policies on the use of campus spaces when it held an unrecognized August event and created a safety hazard by obstructing pedestrian traffic. According to the group’s Instagram account, it had held a “die-in” in which participants lay on the ground in protest of Israeli military operations in Gaza. Security forces had to break up the protest, and police arrested four people.
In the letter published by Michigan Daily, Jones added a two-year suspension, reviewable upon completion of a meeting with the dean, another with Associate Dean of Students Dr. Sarah Daniels on awareness of university policies, and a third with CCI staff to create conditions for the organization’s return.
Hubbard was not the only UMich regent to be harassed at their home by anti-Israel activists. In May, masked activists came to Regent Jordan Acker’s home with a list of demands. In December, an object was thrown through a window of Acker’s home, and the family vehicle was graffitied with the slogans “divest” and “free Palestine.” A red inverted triangle, a symbol used in Hamas propaganda to denote the targeting of enemies, was also scrawled on the car.
Like many US campuses, UMich was host to an encampment, established at the university on April 22 to demand the institution divest from any companies doing business with Israel and that it boycott Israeli academic institutions. Students told The Jerusalem Post that the encampment was set up in the middle of the campus grounds and made traversal of the university difficult.