Reflections: The Political Moment in Higher Education

Leila Kawar

New York Times captured University of Michigan graduating students waving Palestinian flags at the May 2024 commencement ceremony in the Big House and put on its May 5, 2024 front page.

HOW DO WE to conceptualize the current political moment in U.S. higher education, and how can we organize a response? I address these questions from my perspective as a sociolegal researcher and an associate professor at the University of Michigan.

The reflections that I share here draw on my experience as an engaged scholar, and specifically on the engagements over the past two years that I and my fellow faculty members have undertaken to defend our university and our students against unprecedented attacks.(1)

My perspective in the current political moment in U.S. higher education is informed by my own spatial position as a resident of southeast Michigan.

Those who are historically minded may recall that during World War II, the area of southeast Michigan became popularly known as “the arsenal of democracy.” According to the Detroit Historical Society, President Franklin Roosevelt coined the term “The Arsenal of Democracy” to refer to the U.S. role in providing military weapons and equipment to its wartime allies overseas. At the time, Detroit came to epitomize this effort, as its automobile industry converted itself towards supplying the war’s material arsenal.

By the summer of 1944, Ford’s Willow Run plant completed one B-24 bomber every hour. In the words of trade union leader Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) for more than two decades after the war: “Like England’s battles were won on the playing fields of Eton, America’s were won on the assembly lines of Detroit.”

As images from the period reveal, the assembly lines of Detroit kept running because they were supplied with the labor of southeast Michigan’s black and brown workers, many of them newcomers to the city, who made essential contributions to its war effort.(2)

Today, some reactionary populists might wish to take this country back to a period that they associate with American greatness and the glory days of U.S. industry when Detroit was celebrated as “the arsenal of democracy.”

Yet American foreign warmaking is currently the subject of vigorous public criticism. This is especially true as it relates to the U.S. technology and materials being supplied for an assault on Gaza that many Americans do not support and that they consider to be unjust.(3)

Since October 2023, southeast Michigan’s Arab-American community has been particularly traumatized by the Israeli military assault on the occupied territory of Gaza, which has left tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians dead and every higher education institution in Gaza destroyed. Many scholars in U.S. academia have condemned this ongoing “scholasticide,” supported by the research and investment channeled through our institutions of higher education.(4)

Beyond the growing dissent over U.S. foreign policy, there are other ways in which U.S. society today looks different from the period when Detroit first embraced its role as “the arsenal of democracy.”

While in 1944 Detroit’s Black and brown autoworkers had labored on assembly lines converted to U.S. military production, today Black and brown students are obtaining degrees from the State of Michigan’s flagship research university in increasing numbers.

Indeed, as under­graduate students at the University of Michigan, many are passionately organizing — joined by Jewish-American and Asian American students, and many others — to end an unjust war on Gaza in which they see the U.S. military-industrial complex and their own universities as complicit.

Last year, this changing face of U.S. higher education was strikingly on display at the University of Michigan’s end-of-year commencement ceremony. On a sunny morning in early May at the stadium of the university’s championship football team, Michigan’s role as “the arsenal of democracy” was explicitly invoked by U.S. Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro, who delivered remarks as one of the commencement speakers.

Addressing the audience of some 70,000 students and their families who had gathered for the university-wide Commencement ceremony at the Big House (as the stadium is called), the invited speaker celebrated the University as a powerhouse of U.S. industry. Strikingly, however, the Secretary of the Navy and the other graduation speakers, as well as the University Regents and administrative leadership who sat on the platform behind them, were upstaged by undergraduate students.

Holding up Palestinian flags and wearing black-and-white keffiyeh scarves, graduating students rose up from their seats in the middle of the ceremony in a collective expression of solidarity with their peers in Gaza.

Ultimately, it was these students’ hope-filled faces that were captured in an iconic image on the front page of the Sunday NY Times the following morning.(5)

Campus Life: Contrasting Glimpses

Beyond capturing the changing face of the undergraduate student body, the tableau at the University of Michigan’s Big House in May 2024 reminds us that the current political moment in U.S. higher education in fact preceded Donald Trump’s return to the Presidency in January 2025. On the Ann Arbor campus, these dynamics leading up to the last election played out on campus in specific ways.

To gain a better understanding of what was happening even before the university was caught up in the unprecedented assault of Trump 2.0, we can look to the campus coverage of the University of Michigan’s student-run newspaper, The Michigan Daily.

The Daily’s campus news coverage and accompanying photojournalism over the period between October 2023 and January 2025 are particularly revealing of what was happening on the ground. Looking to The Daily’s coverage from the 2023-24 academic year, we might begin with two glimpses of campus life that are especially revealing for their contrast with each other.

In the first scene, a photographer for The Daily has captured the “night of remembrance” on October 21, 2023 organized by student leaders from the University of Michigan’s Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) and the U-M Arab Student Association, in coordination with other campus community organizations.

Facing away from the camera and addressing a somber candle-lit vigil on a cold autumn night, two university students draped in the Palestinian flag share their personal experiences with the Israeli attacks in Gaza that, as The Daily reported, in their first two weeks had already killed more than 3000 Palestinians, destroyed one hospital, cut electricity, food, water and fuel supplies to Gaza, and forced the displacement of more than a million civilians.(6)

In the second scene, approximately one month later, a cluster of police officers attempt to block students from entering a university building.

According to The Daily, about 300 University of Michigan students had gathered that Friday afternoon on the Diag — as the main plaza on the university’s central campus is known — for a pro-Palestine demonstration led by a coalition of 63 student organizations who protested the administration’s lack of a response to previous calls for the University of Michigan to divest from Israel.

As they had done two weeks earlier, students marched from the Diag to the Ruthven Building, where the University President’s office is located. But this time the public building was closed without notice during normal work hours. At least 25 police vehicles, some officers armed with riot shields, had arrived before the march reached the building.

As The Daily reported, the protest was peaceful and there were no reports of violence from protestors. Police attempted to push protestors away from the building before they rushed inside, and then prevented anyone else from entering after the initial group of protestors was inside.

A small group of students peacefully occupied the office of University President Santa Ono and 40 students were eventually arrested for trespassing.(7)

These scenes would repeat themselves in various ways during the 2023-24 academic year, as UM’s student-led pro-Palestine coalition — which in November named itself the Tahrir (or “liberation”) Coalition — continued to seek a meeting with University President Santa Ono, which he never granted.

Gaza solidarity encampment and artwork on the Diag of University of Michigan Ann Arbor, May 2024. Photo: Leila Kawar

Throughout the long Michigan winter, students continued to organize actions that sought to disrupt the status quo of campus life to direct public attention to the ongoing attack on Gaza. There was a sense of urgency because Palestinian American students, many of whom had been born and raised in southeast Michigan, were losing dozens of family members in Israeli bombings.

Ultimately, inspired by their peers at Columbia University, University of Michigan students created their own Gaza Solidarity encampment on the Diag shortly before the end of the academic year.(8)

Backlash and Criminal Charges

This then brings us to the period of backlash and repression, which at the University of Michigan was clearly underway by the summer of 2024 and which has since then escalated under Trump 2.0.

Two and a half weeks after the university commencement in the Big House, in the early morning hours of Tuesday, May 21 the campus police forced the clearing of the University of Michigan’s Gaza Solidarity encampment. Students were pepper-sprayed, their tents were plowed by heavy equipment, and police arrested four protesters during the clearing operation.(9)

Michigan State Attorney General Dana Nessel subsequently stepped in — or arguably was asked to step in — to file criminal charges against seven of those arrested, in a move which the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan stated it found “concerning and unprecedented.”

Attorney General Nessel began this investigation as early as late May, publicly announcing her decision to prosecute the Michigan encampment cases in September.(10)

Beyond the filing of state criminal charges, there were also changes to internal university policies. Over the summer, with no public notice, the Board of Regents enacted changes to student disciplinary processes, revised the campus facilities use policy, and hired consultants to pursue internal disciplinary complaints against student protesters.

The university would go on — using a hired consultant complainant — to initiate a disciplinary process that effectuated the suspension of SAFE’s status as a university-recognized student organization.

Throughout the 2024-25 academic year, students engaging in peaceful protests on campus faced more heavy-handed police responses, as well as surveillance and campus bans that in some instances did not even provide exceptions for enrolled students to attend their classes.

Additional criminal charges were brought by AG Nessel in early January, related to an unpermitted “die-in” action held on campus in late-August, where students had read out the names of children under one-year-old who had been killed in Gaza.(11)

Repression of student protests was also being used as a pretext for attacks on the university’s “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)” programming.

Individual University Regents made statements about an approaching “moment of reckoning” for DEI programming at our university, and critics of DEI found a public platform in a series of problematic feature-length articles that The New York Times published about the University of Michigan.(12)

Furthermore, in December a Democratic Party regent was personally involved in the firing of a staff director in the University’s DEI Office, whose presence in support of students at the pro-Palestine die-in action on campus was identified as one rationale for her employment termination.(13)

Speaking at an event hosted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in March 2025, University President Santa Ono not only defended the staff member’s employment termination but also ominously suggested, in response to a question, that tenured University of Michigan faculty might face the same fate.(14)

Starting in February 2025, as has been well-reported in the media, the Trump Administration’s assault on U.S. higher education has leveled unprecedented attacks on academic research and has threatened to undermine academic freedom.

From the perspective of University of Michigan, this brazen government weaponization of cuts — or threatened cuts — to federal funding for university research programs has certainly made things worse in every way.

The culture warriors behind this public spectacle of attacks on so-called “woke” higher education have adopted a no-holds-barred approach that has left universities grappling with tremendous uncertainty.

Fearing that University of Michigan would face public targeting like Columbia and Harvard, university leadership and the Board of Regents made the decision to shut down all DEI programming.

On March 27 an all-university email statement titled “evolving our approach to DEI” announced the decision to shut down all UM DEI programs, stating: “Conversations about these institutional efforts have been ongoing since at least 2023 and, with recent federal executive orders, guidance and funding cuts bringing urgency to the issue, we are moving forward with changes.”

These changes included closure of the university’s DEI Office and termination of existing DEI programming, effective immediately. In addition, it was announced that the University’s Office of General Counsel would initiate an expedited review of all policies, programs and practices to ensure their “compliance with federal guidance.” And all units would be required to evaluate their web presence “to reflect the status of current programmatic directions.”(15)

“Prematurely Capitulate”

At this writing, the University of Michigan has not (yet) been singled out by the Trump Administration in the manner of Columbia or Harvard. But nor has it escaped the clutches of the broader Trump 2.0 assault on the entire U.S. higher education sector.

Research projects continue to be suspended or made contingent on public adherence to the ideological agenda imposed by culture warriors. These attacks on academic freedom continue under the guise of attacking “woke” academia, just as they continue to exploit the current anti-Palestinian/antisemitism political divide within the U.S. professional and intellectual classes.

Indeed, if the University of Michigan’s DEI program, because of the high-profile criticisms directed against it, came to be perceived as distinctly vulnerable to Trump 2.0 attacks — such that in March of this year it became the subject of a preemptive and damaging capitulation — then this was in large part a self-inflicted wound.

As we have seen, the attacks on both DEI programming and DEI staff members on the one hand, and on the minority students who sought in various ways to claim public space within university life on the other hand, were repeatedly publicly linked.

At the University of Michigan as elsewhere, we have witnessed a continuity of repressive responses towards both diversity programs associated with emancipatory social movements and towards the emancipatory social movements themselves. And these repressive responses were already taking a toll well before Trump 2.0 gained control of the federal government.

Things were not yet over: In April, two weeks before the end of the academic term, University Human Resources terminated the employment of a young academic staff member for participating eleven months earlier as a graduating student in a pro-Palestine protest.16 And the day after the semester ended, State AG Nessel executed search warrants at the homes of four current University students, citing a vandalism investigation that had begun ten months earlier.(17)

Summing up the state of where we are now, here are the words of a retired staff member who was interviewed by The Daily at a rally calling for the university to reinstate DEI programming:

“Apparently the current [university] administration just thinks their job is to cave right now and prematurely capitulate to what Trump might ask of them, and it’s a damn shame because students deserve better.”(18)

Moving Forward

People’s Graduation, Ann Arbor, MI, May 2025. Photo: Tahrir Coalition

What does this specific University of Michigan experience reveal about the consequences of the attacks on U.S. higher education and the form that resistance might take moving forward?

First, in the short term, to confront attacks on higher education meaningfully, and indeed to build a higher education system that better promotes foundational values such as freedom of inquiry, we need university officials to move away from leading with fear.

There needs to be a decisive shift away from the current combination of defensive posturing and what one colleague has termed “reverse benchmarking” that is not only ineffective in the face of an administration bent on destroying higher ed but also betrays core values — clearly not what faculty want.

University of Michigan faculty have collectively and publicly called on leaders of their university to exercise real leadership and to use their leadership positions to build common cause with other institutions in defense of U.S. higher education.

Second, looking further ahead, this is an opportunity to advance a more inclusive vision of higher education. When envisioning the higher education system that we need for a just and sustainable world, one key aspect must be its inclusivity.

The Big House at Michigan (or its equivalents elsewhere) should not be reserved for donors in the skyboxes and frat boys in the stands. It belongs just as much to members of the multi-racial, multi-religious student movement who choose to wear Palestinian keffiyehs to their graduation as they express solidarity with their peers in Gaza, and thereby make the playing field their own.

U.S. universities can do better than operating as the technical or military arsenal for so-called democracies; instead, they should aim to model what it means to be a truly inclusive and equitable democracy for all of us.

Postscript: Goodbye Ono

On May 4, 2025, one year to the day after pro-Palestine student protesters upstaged the all-university commencement speakers in the Big House, University of Michigan President Santa Ono announced that he would leave Ann Arbor to become the next president of the University of Florida.(19)

The announcement was sent on a Sunday evening when at least one of the University’s schools was in the midst of conducting its commencement.

Ono was reportedly recruited to his new position with a substantially higher salary. He would join a system of Florida colleges and universities that has been facing “a politically and ideologically driven assault unparalleled in U.S. history” that threatens the very survival of meaningful higher education in the state.(20) [Ironically, Ono’s appointment has been cancelled by the far-right Florida Board of Governors.]

The following morning, on May 5, 2025 AG Dana Nessel formally dropped all charges related to the University of Michigan’s Gaza solidarity encampment.(21) That evening, a People’s Graduation was held in an Ann Arbor public park. The organizers wrote:

“As we commemorate the end of another academic year, the genocide in Gaza and our university’s complicity continues. Join us for a people’s ceremony to honor our martyrs and commit to carrying the struggle for liberation and return beyond graduation.”

Notes

1. The initiatives in which I have taken part are very much a grassroots effort, and so I am not here to speak on behalf of any organization or network, although I’m grateful to several wonderful faculty and staff colleagues for helpful feedback on these remarks.
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2. Detroit Historical Society, “Arsenal of Democracy” Encyclopedia of Detroit. https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/arsenal-democracy
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3. The U.S. Secretary of Defense acknowledged publicly in June 2024 that the U.S. had provided the Israeli military with more than 10,000 highly destructive 2000-pound bombs. Pamuk, H and Stone, M. “US has sent Israel thousands of 2,000-pound bombs since Oct. 7” Reuters June 29, 2024. https://www.reuters.com/world/us-has-sent-israel-thousands-2000-pound-bombs-since-oct-7-2024-06-28/
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4. “Scholasticide in Palestine” AAUP webinar, March 6, 2025. https://www.aaup.org/event/scholasticide-palestine
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5. Photo of protesters holding flags during the University of Michigan’s commencement ceremony. Hamilton J. for Mlive.Com/Ann Arbor News, via Associated Press and reprinted in the New York Times, May 4, 2024. https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/05/04/multimedia/04campus-protests-michigan-mvjh/04campus-protests-michigan-mvjh-mediumThreeByTwo440.jpg
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6. Mintz R and Johnston B. “A Night of Remembrance honors Palestinians killed” The Michigan Daily, October 21, 2023. https://www.michigandaily.com/news/campus-life/a-night-of-remembrance-honors-palestinians-killed-in-2023-israel-hamas-war-implements-community-action-plan/
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7. Rich S. “’Who do you serve, who do you protect?’ Nov. 17 protest at Ruthven met with poice violence, mass arrests” The Michigan Daily, November 29, 2023.
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8. Dhandapani S and Shanbom M. “’We will not stop until we get full divestment’: UMich student protesters camp out on Diag for divestment” The Michigan Daily, April 22, 2024. https://www.michigandaily.com/news/administration/we-will-not-stop-until-we-get-full-divestment-umich-student-protesters-camp-out-on-diag-for-divestment/
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9. Michigan Daily News Staff. “UMich Gaza solidarity encampment removed” The Michigan Daily, May 21, 2024. https://www.michigandaily.com/news/news-briefs/breaking-gaza-encampment-removed/
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10. Perkins T. “University of Michigan recruits state attorney general to crack down on Gaza protesters” The Guardian, October 24, 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/24/michigan-attorney-general-dana-nessel-campus-gaza-protests
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11. Corsi M. “Michigan Attorney General charges three pro-Palestine protesters for Festifall ‘die-in’” The Michigan Daily, January 20, 2025. https://www.michigandaily.com/news/news-briefs/michigan-attorney-general-charges-three-pro-palestine-protesters-for-festifall-die-in/
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12. Confessore N. “University of Michigan Weighs Changes to Its Diversity Program” New York Times, December 4, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/04/us/university-of-michigan-dei.html
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13. Weineck S. “Anatomy of a Witch Hunt” The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 25, 2025. https://www.chronicle.com/article/anatomy-of-a-witch-hunt
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14. Dakis D and Corsi, M. “UMich community reacts to Ono’s appearance at Anti-Defamation League antisemitism summit” The Michigan Daily, March 17, 2025. https://www.michigandaily.com/news/administration/umich-community-reacts-to-onos-appearance-at-anti-defamation-league-antisemitism-summit
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15. Office of the President. “Evolving our approach to DEI and moving forward together” University of Michigan News and Communications, March 27, 2025. https://president.umich.edu/news-communications/messages-to-the-community/evolving-our-approach-to-dei-and-moving-forward-together/
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16. Dolata B. “UMich fires full-time employee, suspends 4 from campus jobs for participating in May 3 pro-Palestine protest” The Michigan Daily, April 10, 2025. https://www.michigandaily.com/news/news-briefs/umich-suspends-students-from-campus-jobs-for-participating-in-may-3-pro-palestine-protest/
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17. Minetti C. “FBI and AAPD officers carry out raid against pro-Palestinian activists” The Michigan Daily, April 23, 2025. https://www.michigandaily.com/news/news-briefs/fbi-and-aapd-officers-carry-out-raid-against-pro-palestinian-activists/
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18. Hedin G. “BSU leads UMich community in protest against DEI cuts” The Michigan Daily, April 10, 2025. https://www.michigandaily.com/news/campus-life/bsu-leads-umich-community-in-protest-against-dei-cuts/
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19. Wisely, J. “University of Michigan President Santa Ono to leave for University of Florida” Detroit Free Press May 4, 2025. https://www.freep.com/story/news/education/2025/05/04/u-m-president-santa-ono-stepping-down/83448289007/
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20. AAUP. Report of a Special Committee: Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System. December 2023. https://www.aaup.org/report/report-special-committee-political-interference-and-academic-freedom-florida%E2%80%99s-public-higher
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21. Wisely, J. “Michigan AG Dana Nessel drops all charges against U-M pro-Palestinian protesters” Detroit Free Press May 5, 2025. https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2025/05/05/michigan-attorney-general-dana-nessel-drops-all-charges-university-michigan-diag-protesters/83452242007
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July-August 2025, ATC 237