Pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan. Photo: Screenshot
The University of Michigan has reportedly initiated disciplinary proceedings against one of its most outspoken and controversial anti-Israel groups, Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE), the result of which may be a suspension of up to four years.
“The complaint was initiated through the Office of Student Organization Advancement and Recognition (SOAR), which is under the Center for Campus Involvement,” SAFE said on Thursday in a statement, which did not disclose what merited the punishment, published on Instagram. “Similarly to the academic disciplinary charges initiated through [the Office of Student Conflict Resolution] against protesters from the November 17th sit-in, the university acts as the judge, jury, and executioner in these disciplinary proceedings.”
It added, “This unprecedented, racist move against a legacy org contradicts any claim that the university values its history of student activism.”
The University of Michigan has not responded to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment for this story.
SAFE has long been a source of anti-Israel activity on campus. In January, its members led an anti-government protest against the outgoing presidential administration, represented by US Vice President Kamala Harris, who appeared at the school to discuss climate change. They chanted “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide, you’re committing genocide” and called for mass casualty events inspired by Islamist terrorism, screaming “There is only one solution: Intifada revolution” while waving Palestinian flags. The student who appeared to be leading the demonstration condemned the Biden administration for approving aid to Israel, which she referred to as “the Zionist entity.”
In 2022, during observance of the Jewish New Year, SAFE erected an “apartheid wall” on campus and led an anti-Israel protest in front of it. Some University of Michigan students approached the protesters and urged them to become fully apprised of the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, The Michigan Daily, a campus newspaper, reported at the time. Standing atop a nearby structure, they made a “thumbs-down” gesture when they perceived the protesters’ remarks as offensive or lacking nuance.
By sanctioning SAFE, the University of Michigan joins other schools that have taken similar steps to deter and punish extremism and lawlessness on campus. Earlier this month, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reportedly banished from campus a student who penned an article which argued that violence is a legitimate method of effecting political change and, moreover, advancing the pro-Palestinian movement.
Other schools, however, have come under fire for what critics have described as insufficient action to identify and discipline vandals and those who have even perpetrated antisemitic assault and continue to threaten the safety of Jewish students. Harvard University, for example, has not announced any progress on its investigation of the vandalizing of the John Harvard Statue and University Hall. Meanwhile, Princeton University has not been successful in determining who graffitied school property last month on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
Just recently, two Jewish students at DePaul University in Chicago were “brutally” assaulted while participating in a pro-Israel demonstration. Their attackers remain at large.
Jewish civil rights organizations have repeatedly called on university leaders to address extremist pro-Hamas activity on their campuses, citing a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena last year. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), 10 campuses accounted for 16 percent of all incidents tracked by ADL researchers during the 2023-2024 academic year, with Columbia University and the University of Michigan combining for 90 anti-Israel incidents, 52 and 38 respectively. Harvard University, the University of California—Los Angeles, Rutgers University New Brunswick, Stanford University, Cornell University, and others filled out the rest of the top 10. Violence, the ADL report continued, was most common at universities in the state of California, where an anti-Zionist activist punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.
“Jews and/or Zionists were associated with greed and bloodthirstiness or compared to rodents and other animals,” the report said. “In one incident on April 19, 2024, at the encampment at Yale University, a protester displayed a sign depicting a shirtless Joe Biden cradling and breastfeeding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is drinking drops of blood from dollar signs on Biden’s bosom.”
Another recent study measured the degree to which college faculty foster anti-Jewish hatred and spread propaganda undermining the legitimacy of Israel’s existence by founding pro-Hamas Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapters. Authored by researchers of AMCHA Initiative, a higher education antisemitism watchdog, the study found that FJP’s presence on a college campuses increased by seven times “the likelihood of physical assaults and Jewish students” and increased by three times the chance that a Jewish student would be subject to threats of violence and death.
FJP also “prolonged” the duration of “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” protests on college campuses, in which students occupied a section of campus illegally and refused to leave unless administrators capitulated to demands for a boycott of Israel. The report said that such demonstrations lasted over four and a half times longer where FJP faculty were free to influence and provide logistic and material support to students. Professors at FJP schools also spent 9.5 more days protesting than those at non-FJP schools.
“These faculty led-groups are inciting anti-Zionist activism among students, propelling academic boycotts, and actively fostering an environment where Jewish students are physically attacked and threatened,” AMCHA executive director and co-founder Tammi Rossman-Benjamin said in a press release announcing the study’s publication. “Without immediate intervention from university administrations and policymakers, the situation will only worsen, leaving Jewish students and faculty vulnerable to escalating violence.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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