Above photo: Zina Issa.
This latest in a series of police and administrative attacks on university student and worker voices comes as a response to growing labor and social justice movements on campus.
Over the last two years, the University of Michigan (UM) administration has been fiercely repressing student and worker voices on campus with a combination of police and administrative attacks. The University has conducted large-scale arrests of student protestors demanding divestment from financial ties to the Israeli military, sent campus police to the homes of graduate student union organizers as an intimidation tactic, and violently attacked the community encampment calling for an end to the university’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza. In less physically violent but no less aggressive moves, UM has attempted to discipline the activist Graduate Employee Organization (GEO) union for their 2023 strike and their substantial fights for a living wage, the dismantling of the large campus police apparatus, and divestment from Israel by changing hiring practices for graduate student workers. The university’s moves to discipline student protestors and union workers set a clear pattern of authoritarian repression that has been developing, driven by capitalist military war profiteering and a race-to-the-bottom austerity approach to education. In both contexts, UM has moved aggressively to silence any dissenting voices, framing them as threats to campus safety.
In March, the university pushed their repression of community voices further in their draft policy against “disruption,” which was widely criticized by students, faculty, and alumni, as well as GEO, the Lecturer Employee Organization (LEO) which represents non-tenure-track faculty, the AAUP chapter representing some tenure-track faculty, and the ACLU of Michigan, among others. Despite widespread criticism, the university doubled-down on the legitimacy of the statement, while indicating that they would continue thinking about how the new policy would be implemented. But an important line was buried in the University’s response to critics, signaling their next avenue of repression of dissenting voices: “We will also consider whether a revision to our long-standing policies and standards of conduct will meet our current needs.”
The university snuck those revisions in this summer while students and faculty were largely absent from campus. On July 18, UM’s elected Board of Regents (consisting of six Democrats and two Republicans) sidestepped the normal process of consultations with Central Student Government and the Faculty Senate and voted to adopt a new set of revisions to the University’s “Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities,” the document that outlines disciplinary policies for students.
In its revisions to the Statement, UM eliminated guarantees that an accused student could ask for an appeals panel consisting of students, faculty, and staff. Now, the Vice President for Student Affairs – a university administrator – handles all appeals. If the university were a neutral party in these hearings, this change might be less problematic. But another significant change to the statement is that now UM itself can file complaints against students, while previously complaints had to be filed by other students, faculty, or staff.
In the Statement’s descriptions of the hearing process, the effects of the university serving as a complainant are subtle but important:
The respondent may choose to have a Resolution Officer (RO) or a Student Resolution Panel arbitrate the dispute. Should the complainant disagree with the respondent’s choice, an RO will arbitrate the matter.
With this addition, the University gives itself the ability to forego due process if it so chooses because, besides acting as the final arbitrator in the appeals process, this change gives the university veto power if an accused student opts for a panel of peers. This veto would force the student’s case into the hands of a Resolution Officer appointed by the University . . . making it both the complainant and final judge. Essentially, the University has changed its policies so that it can prosecute and punish students freely without oversight from faculty or student representative bodies.
These changes are, of course, directly related to the calls for divestment from Israel’s occupation of Palestine, its genocide in Gaza, and it’s ongoing attacks onLebanon. They should be viewed alongside other authoritarian attacks against pro-Palestinian protestors in Michigan, including violent police attacks against students and community members at Wayne State University in Detroit and Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel’s announcement that she will bring charges against 11 community members, including seven felony charges against people that were in the UM encampment when it was raided by police. In the felony charges, Nessel contends that the protestors used “physical force to counter” police, even though video of police pepper-spraying people contradicts that claim. Local police frequently turned body cameras off while surveilling the encampment and the state has refused to make body camera footage available to local reporters who filed a Freedom of Information Act request.
It is important to recognize what UM and the state government’s two-pronged attack on freedom of speech on campus illustrates about the connections between personal freedoms, working-class power, and anti-war activism. All three are being attacked simultaneously, all in the name of encouraging “safety” or avoiding “disruption.”
As people across the country – but especially in swing states like Michigan – are warned of the disastrous potential of another Trump presidency, it is important to be aware of the ways that liberals in governments and universities are also taking the opportunity to roll back protections for protesters and workers. It is not enough to beat back one particular autocrat. We need to come together and form a broad coalition that fights against anyone who would limit our rights to protest and maintain control over our communities and workplaces.