The ACLU of Michigan is warning the University of Michigan about what it calls “an escalating pattern of suppression” in the university’s response to student protests and campus speech regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict.
In a letter sent Tuesday to UM President Santa Ono and General Counsel Timothy Lynch, the civil rights organization said the school’s actions reflect “a rising nationwide McCarthyite wave of retaliation against speech related to Palestine and Israel.” It claims the university’s actions violate First Amendment protections, as well as UM’s own free speech policies.
ACLU staff attorney Ramis Wadood said examples include UM shutting down student listservs to prevent e-mails discussing the conflict, “an unnecessarily outsized police response” to a November 17 pro-Palestine protest, and canceling student body elections on two separate resolutions supporting Israel and Gaza.
“University of Michigan students are entitled to express their views without fear of reprisal or suppression by the University,” the letter reads. “Yet, as these instances demonstrate, the University seems to be meeting student speech and protest with unnecessary resistance.”
Wadood said there are limits to constitutionally-protected speech that need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. But he said what the university cracked down on here was “clearly protected speech.”
“We have student speakers at protests,” Wadood said. “We have students sending emails to their peers and to the student body as a whole. We have students utilizing honored democratic processes such as student body elections.”
Wadood said that over the past two months, the ACLU has “received a number of phone calls, emails from students at the University of Michigan in a way that we haven't really seen before,” with “students ringing the alarm bells about their ability to participate in an on-campus dialogue about a matter of significant public concern.”
In a public statement issued early this month, UM President Ono defended the decision to remove the Israel/Gaza resolutions from the student government voting agenda, calling them “controversial and divisive” and “hav[ing] done more to stoke fear, anger and animosity on our campus than they would ever accomplish as recommendations to the university.”
On Tuesday, UM spokesman Rick Fitzgerald said via email that “the University of Michigan has the highest regard for free speech and our long-standing policy affirms that position.” He went on to say that “Freedom of speech is a bedrock principle of our community and essential to our core educational mission as a university– it is reflected in our history, policies and practices.
“The university’s Standard Practice Guide reaffirms our commitment to free speech,” he continued. “It states, in part, that “expression of diverse points of view is of the highest importance, not only for those who espouse a cause or position and then defend it, but also for those who hear and pass judgment on that defense. The belief that an opinion is pernicious, false, or in any other way detestable cannot be grounds for its suppression.”
Wadood said the ACLU also submitted Freedom of Information Act requests for university communications regarding what the group sees as UM officials’ efforts to suppress protected speech. “All we know is the outcome of those conversations, but we need to see more about the conversations themselves to know what motivated this outcome,” he said.
Fitzgerald said UM “will review this letter carefully and respond directly to the ACLU.”
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