Drop the Student Disciplinary Charges!

UM Ann Arbor Chapter of the American Association of University Professors Statement Regarding Recent Disciplinary Charges Against Student Protesters

The University of Michigan Ann Arbor Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (UM-AA AAUP) is dismayed to learn that the University is bringing new charges against 11 student protesters, including undergraduate and graduate students, through the Office of Student Conflict Resolution (OSCR) on the Ann Arbor campus.

Since November 2023, our AAUP chapter has objected when the University retaliated against student protestors with punishment and policing; made unilateral revisions to the Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities (SSRR), which diminished or eliminated protections for those facing charges through OSCR; circulated hastily drafted policies to thwart protest on campus; weakened and undermined commitments to academic freedom; and fired workers for exercising their first amendment rights. We are deeply concerned that the University has gone even further to suppress pro-Palestine activism, installing an extensive surveillance camera network and hiring private security to aggressively monitor students and staff. These actions affect all members of the University community by chilling speech and civic discourse and by placing people at risk for racial profiling and other harms. Together, these actions raise important questions about the Universityʼs commitment to due process principles.

In bringing these disciplinary charges with significant delay and using a substantively compromised process (one that retroactively applies unilaterally-imposed and off-cycle revisions to the SSRR), the University gives the appearance not only of targeting protests against the genocide in Gaza but also of weaponizing the complaint process so as to silence any future pro-Palestine activism on campus. Moreover, such actions will likely further chill expressions of dissent, regardless of the subject matter. If the University does not require complainants to have suffered harm (i.e., they need not have legal standing) and ignores statutes of limitations, then there can be no meaningful free speech on campus.

We call on the University to withdraw these disciplinary charges that target students involved in pro-Palestine activism. We urge the University to recommit to democratic principles by restoring due process protections in student disciplinary proceedings.

--
Julie Boland
Professor of Psychology & Linguistics
Assoc Chair of Undergraduate Studies, Psychology
President, UM Ann Arbor Chapter of AAUP
University of Michigan

UMFAFT-AAUP Statement Regarding Recent Disciplinary Charges Against Student Protesters

The UMF AFT-AAUP recently learned of new charges being brought against 10 student protesters, including both undergraduate and graduate students, under the Office of Student Conflict Resolution (OSCR) on the Ann Arbor campus. We are deeply troubled by this news.

We live in a time when many are questioning the value and effectiveness of our nation’s democratic institutions. As we iterated in our October 9, 2024 op-ed in The Michigan Daily, universities must support the democratic fabric of society by cultivating freedom of expression and shared governance. Doing so ensures the effectiveness of our public good mission and serves as an example of democratic practice for society at large, especially in times like these.

Unfortunately, the issuing of these new charges fits a broader pattern of doing the opposite. Since early 2024 we have seen, among other things, an institutional emphasis on punishing student demonstrators, sometimes months after their alleged infractions; unilateral revisions to the Student Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, including the weakening or elimination of protections for those facing charges under OSCR; and the hiring of third-parties to aggressively monitor and charge student protesters. While directed at students, these actions affect all members of the university community, putting us at risk of surveillance, chilling speech and civic discourse, and undermining faith in the university’s commitment to fairness and due process.

We call upon the university to reverse this pattern and to recommit to democratic principles in these matters. This, minimally, would begin with withdrawing the recently issued charges against student protesters, and refraining from bringing such charges in the future, at least until the checks needed to protect freedom of expression and due process are restored to OSCR and all other processes affecting student discipline across our three campuses.

Issued by the UMF AFT-AAUP on July 16, 2025

Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Council Statement on Charges Brought Against University of Michigan Students:

Dear Interim President Grasso and University Regents:

The Academic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace protests the disciplinary charges now being brought against eleven students by the University of Michigan (U-M) for exercising rights of expressive freedom in support of the Palestinian struggle for survival and human rights. These charges allege disciplinary infractions largely under the new policies for Student Rights and Responsibilities, implemented by the Regents over faculty objections last year.

The charges concern four different protests and events that took place in 2024. Many of the students who are charged were victims of the University of Michigan campus police raid on the U-M Encampment on May 21, 2024 at 5:30 AM which sent multiple protestors to the hospital with concussions and broken bones. It is our understanding that, following the failure of U-M to get criminal charges to stick on student and staff activists in the recent past, the U-M Office of Student Conflict Resolution (OSCR) is likely to impose its own sanctions on students. These could range from disciplinary probation to a lifetime ban on re-enrolling at University at Michigan. Such actions, if left to stand, will have grave implications for these individual students’ futures as well as for the principles that permit protest on campus.

The possibility of OSCR sanctions is especially disturbing in light of other press reports about the U-M Regent-led repression of pro-Palestine students and workers on campus, including: the outrageous firing of Rachel Dawson (which we have previously condemned); well documented repeated deployment of police violence against protestors, especially with chemical weapons; arbitrary bans of 60+ individuals from parts or all of campus; the use of undercover spies to report student activities to campus police, which resulted in the jailing of one student for four days; firings and employment bans of at least 12 students and staff who were given no recourse to any due process or appeal; and of course The Guardian newspaper’s report of the Regents’ recruitment of Michigan Attorney General Nessell to pursue criminal charges against young people on campus protesting the genocide in Gaza. It’s clear to us that the U-M Board of Regents has been explicitly dedicated to silencing growing opposition to Israeli state practices that include apartheid and genocide. This is unjustifiable censorship and retaliation against students and staff for exercising basic rights of assembly, association, and expression and standing for a principled objection to state violence.

The Academic Council affirms that speech and activism in support of Palestine—and in opposition to Israeli state oppression of Palestinians-–is neither antisemitic nor tainted by antisemitism. Jewish Voice for Peace, and we as its Academic Council, are committed both to Palestinian liberation and Jewish ethical values beyond Zionism, proudly and without qualification. The members of the Academic Council affirm that these twinned commitments are grounded in Jewish values of social justice and Jewish obligations to respond with support to those suffering from oppression. As a body of scholars–including leading experts on all periods of Jewish history; on Zionism and the history of Palestine/Israel; and on contemporary Jewish plurality–we affirm that the disjunction of antisemitism and anti-Zionism is grounded in the established and best scholarship in these areas. The Academic Council thus unequivocally supports the dropping of all charges against the eleven students.

Unfortunately, the Academic Council knows that these kinds of administrative attacks on pro-Palestinian students, staff, and faculty are hardly unique to U-M. To the contrary, they are becoming increasingly commonplace in U.S. higher education. But this is wrong, and principled administrators refuse to follow this trend that separates universities from the core values of democracy. From fear and self-interest, many university administrators have bent to the will of the Trump administration, which has made federal grants conditional on unconditional fealty to the Israeli state—which means staying silent as that state carries out genocide in Gaza. We call upon the University of Michigan not to engage in this complicity. To do so is to normalize complicity, that is, to ratify the banalization of evil, as Hannah Arendt trenchantly called it.

As a body of faculty and scholars, JVP’s Academic Council calls upon higher education administrators—from chancellors and presidents to deans and chairs—to refuse to become part of a genocidal campaign that works in part through the criminalization of dissent and the stripping of rights for those who have the courage to speak out against it. We demand that the University of Michigan drop all charges against the students.

Sincerely,

Dr. Jonah Rubin, Sr. Manager of Campus Organizing
On behalf of the Jewish Voice for Peace - Academic Counci;

JVP is a national, grassroots organization working towards Palestinian freedom and Judaism beyond Zionism. With roughly 750,000 members, supporters, and participants in the last year, JVP is the largest such organization in the world. The Academic Council is a network of scholars dedicated to furthering JVP’s vision and values. Drawing upon our shared commitment to both progressive Jewish values and Palestinian liberation, we organize in solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle on our campus communities, in our scholarly associations, and in educational and academic settings. We draw upon our skills as researchers, educators, and writers to develop critical analysis and reach broad audiences. We understand the aim of attacks on, and repression of, research, teaching and freedom of expression in support of Palestine and critical of Israel and Zionism to establish precedents for suppressing other social movements, from gender freedom and racial justice to climate change and immigration. As such, the Academic Council also works to defend academic freedom not only with respect to Palestine but across the board in K-12 and higher education.

by Communications Chair on July 16, 2025

ANN ARBOR, MI – Last week, the Graduate Employees’ Organization – AFT Local 3550 (GEO) at the University of Michigan, representing over 2,000 Graduate Student Instructors and Staff Assistants, learned that more than ten undergraduate and graduate students at U-M have been charged by the University’s Office of Student Conflict Resolution (OSCR) for their participation in pro-Palestine protests dating back 10 to 14 months. Four of those threatened with discipline are former GEO officers and bargaining team members who have been repeatedly targeted by U-M police and the state. These disciplinary charges clearly demonstrate retaliation against political activism and the further erosion of students’ and workers’ rights on campus.

OSCR Charges: A Last-Ditch Effort

These charges come shortly after Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s highly publicized criminal charges against student activists collapsed under scrutiny of her clear anti-Palestinian bias. Facing this humiliating defeat, and after revelations that the U-M Regents secretly deployed undercover private security agents to spy on students, the University has resorted to weaponizing its internal disciplinary processes to punish student activists. Shamefully, among those now facing OSCR charges are members of the “Encampment 11,” whose criminal charges were recently dismissed. Despite these activists’ charges being dropped, the University continues to pursue punishment and repression through a rigged internal process.

Undermining Due Process and Worker Rights

GEO strongly condemns the Regents’ manipulation of OSCR from its intended restorative justice model into a tool of repression. In July 2024, the Regents unilaterally rewrote the Student Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SSRR), without consulting any relevant campus community members. These changes effectively eliminated due process protections for students:

• The administration can now serve as both complainant and final judge.
• Deadlines for defense preparations have been severely shortened, deliberately limiting students’ ability to defend themselves.
• The Vice President of Student Life, currently Martino Harmon, can override independent panel decisions, guaranteeing predetermined outcomes.

Broader Context of Repression

This latest attack on students fits a troubling pattern of repression led by the U-M Board of Regents. Over the last 18 months, U-M has:

• Deployed police violence repeatedly against protesters, including the use of chemical weapons.
• Arbitrarily banned more than 65 students, staff, and community members from parts or all of campus.
• Fired over a dozen student workers and staff members without due process, enforcing employment blacklists.
• Hired undercover security contractors to harass student activists, leading to multiple arrests and intimidation.
• Collaborated directly with Michigan AG Dana Nessel to pursue unfounded criminal prosecutions of protesters advocating for Palestinian liberation.

These measures are clearly intended to silence growing campus opposition to U-M’s complicity in Israeli apartheid and the ongoing genocide in Gaza—a genocide which has resulted in the destruction of all universities within the territory. Students, grad workers, and faculty have long called for divestment from companies facilitating Israeli violence, yet U-M’s administration continues to defend their investments, prioritizing financial interests over human rights. At the same time, they have chosen to spend precious public resources on disciplining students.

Implications for Student and Labor Activism

GEO recognizes that these OSCR charges represent a grave threat to freedom of assembly and our collective right to protest. If the University can punish any student at any time for activism undertaken months or even years prior, we effectively lose our right to assemble and organize freely. As we go into contract negotiations this year, we will encounter an authoritarian administration that has no qualms breaking its own rules and deploying violence against the campus community, mirroring the worst tendencies of the Trump administration. The Regents’ blatant disregard for due process and willingness to repeatedly penalize student protesters underscores their determination to crush dissent, whether it relates to their anti-Palestinian policies or their underpayment of graduate workers. GEO is committed to responding to these measures through organizing, activism at the bargaining table and beyond, and continued advocacy for our members’ and their students’ right to free expression.

GEO’s Demands

GEO demands that the University administration and the U-M Board of Regents immediately:

• Drop all OSCR disciplinary charges against students involved in pro-Palestine activism.
• Restore due process protections in student disciplinary proceedings.
• End collaboration with undercover security contractors and external political operatives targeting student activists.
• Publicly account for U-M’s investments in companies implicated in Israeli apartheid and genocide, and divest immediately.

Call to Action

GEO urges the U-M community, other campus unions, and broader public to condemn this ongoing assault on free speech and student activism. It is essential that faculty, staff, alumni, and community allies stand with student protesters in opposing these repressive measures.

We further call on the U-M Regents, President’s Office, and OSCR to cease their campaign of harassment and retaliation, restore due process immediately, and publicly reaffirm the university’s commitment to genuine academic freedom, free speech, and human rights.

We refuse to be intimidated. GEO stands resolutely in solidarity with all student protesters fighting for Palestinian liberation, and we commit to organizing against all forms of administrative repression.

Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) – AFT Local 3550

LEO UNION COUNCIL STATEMENT ON RECENT OSCR CHARGES AGAINST STUDENT PROTESTERS

The Lecturer Employee Organization explicitly condemns the Universityʼs decision to charge more undergraduate and graduate student protestors with disciplinary infractions through the Office of Student Conflict Resolution (OSCR). The criminal charges against these student protestors have already been dropped by law enforcement. The Universityʼs attempt to still use OSCR to punish these students illustrates a dwindling concern for freedom of speech and due process. These charges are especially concerning as the new OSCR procedures allow the University to act as both a complainant and arbiter against its own students, a conflict that has already led to the University overturning a student juryʼs acquittal of student protestors.

As LEO has already pointed out in our statement on September 9th 2024, the Universityʼs manipulation of the OSCR procedures and the Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities presents "a chilling repression of free speech, the freedom of assembly, and academic freedom." Therefore, LEO calls on the University to drop these OSCR charges and to bring due process and respect for freedom of speech to the campus conflict resolution process.

SOL CONDEMNS THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE OSCR OFFICE TO PROSECUTE PRO PALESTINE STUDENT PROTESTORS!

DROP THE CHARGES!

SOL STANDS IN UNWAVERING SOLIDARITY WITH STUDENTS FACING OSCR DISCIPLINARY CHARGES!

This summer, the University of Michigan Board of Regents has yet again used the Office of Student Conflict Resolution (OSCR) to pursue disciplinary charges against students for protesting the israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. The Office of Student Conflict Resolution (OSCR) claims to be built upon a foundation of restorative justice principles, with the mission statement "Build Trust. Promote Justice. Teach Peace.", yet its punitive prosecution of these students is unjust and exposes a plethora of hypocritical procedures. Restorative justice is meant to repair harm and foster dialogue-not serve as a tool for repression of free speech.

By pursuing disciplinary action against these students, OSCR aligns itself with the very systems of violence it claims to oppose.

This is not an isolated incident. It is part of a broader pattern of repression that we have seen across countless universities nationwide, where students are targeted for speaking out against their institution’s financial contributions to a genocidal entity.

SOL stands in unwavering solidarity with the students facing disciplinary charges for protesting against israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. As Palestinians are being brutally murdered, starved, and displaced, we must recognize that these protestors are fighting for something larger than ourselves. We condemn this retaliation from OSCR in the strongest terms and demand immediate dismissal of all charges against the students.

In Solidarity,
Solidaridad Organizada para la Liberación (SOL)

Dear President Grasso, Mike Ryan, Martino Harmon, Laura Blake Johnes, Donovan Golich, and the Regents of the University of Michigan, We, the members of Shalom Community Church, call on the University to drop the latest disciplinary charges against student protesters pursued through the Office of Student Conflict Resolution (OSCR).

Shalom Community Church is a Mennonite and Church of the Brethren Christian congregation in Ann Arbor. We hold to traditions of peace and justice and are deeply committed to nonviolent protest. We are motivated by a spiritual conviction that both Israelis and Palestinians are beloved children of God. Each week we light a candle and pray for both Israelis and Palestinians.

It was in this spirit that 14 members of Shalom Community Church responded to the TAHRIR coalition’s invitation to attend a morning sunrise service on May 21, 2024, at the encampment at the University of Michigan. We arrived at about 4:30 am. We gathered in solidarity with Palestinians and in opposition to the unspeakable violence that has been unleashed on Gaza. To speak for a moment on that violence, recently, the premiere scientific journal Nature estimated 80,000 people have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war and some credible sources, such as The Lancet, expect the death toll attributable to the war could rise to nearly 200,000 or more. Currently, people of conscience stand aghast as thousands of children face a slow death by starvation, and as even more thousands of children, apart from profound psychic trauma, face a shortened lifetime characterized by a long list of diseases and health conditions stemming from their prolonged nutritional deficiencies.

On the 21st, we arrived to find a peaceful encampment. The atmosphere was relaxed and harmonious: students were engaged in quiet conversations and a couple of students were gently passing a soccer ball back and forth. Most of the students were still asleep. Later we would meet two homeless men who had joined the encampment and noted the spirit of mutual care and community they had experienced. We began worshiping as a small and diverse group that included Christians, Jews and Muslims. In the middle of a poignant sermon, police began to surround the service. These officers were in stark contrast to the peaceful encampment. They were clad in riot gear and marching in lockstep. They looked prepared for violence. They gave a warning over the loudspeaker demanding that the encampment be cleared in 10 minutes. One of our members captured the end of this warning on cell-phone, and therefore time-stamped, video. However, even before this ten minute warning had ended, police advanced. Within eight minutes of the initial ten-minute warning, per time-stamped video from the same member, police had begun liberally attacking students with pepper spray. We hardly had time to get all our members out of the area. We were wide awake, and we didn’t have any possessions to gather. Therefore, students were not given enough time to peacefully disperse. This advancement and disbursement prior to the ten-minute window included the invasion of, and shutting down under threat of arrest, our sunrise service.

We subsequently witnessed police pushing people who were lawfully standing in solidarity with Palestine, knocking people backward over retaining walls, and then using these moments of disequilibrium and vulnerability as opportunities to unleash copious amounts of pepper spray. Police sprayed chemicals, indiscriminately and directly into the eyes, noses, and mouths of people who were standing on the diag in solidarity with Palestine. Several of our members breathed in chemicals and were affected by the spray. The University of Michigan punished solidarity with Palestine by using police repression to violently evict protestors from the diag. To be clear, it was the police who perpetrated violence and attacked campers. Fortunately, the charges against students for activities that day were eventually, and rightfully, dropped.

We were shocked to hear that the University this month had launched new disciplinary charges against students for actions that allegedly took place 10-14 months ago. For standing up against the horrors taking place in Gaza these students of conscience should be lauded, not punished. We are also upset to hear that joint arbitration has been denied them, a student panel has been denied them, and in sum, authentic due process has been denied them, even though these students are facing life altering consequences.

We respectfully urge the University and Board of Regents to stop the repression of collective expressions of solidarity. Please immediately drop all of these students’ charges and stop signaling that the University cannot tolerate political discourse and activities people of decency have taken and are taking to bring about an end to horrific violence.

Until Justice and Peace Embrace,

Shalom Community Church Congregation
Jo Hatlem, Lead Pastor

DROP THE OSCR CHARGES

EAA rejects UM’s use of the Office of Student Conflict Resolution (OSCR) to continue to harass and persecute students who are using their first amendment rights and right to assembly to speak out against apartheid and genocide.

The University of Michigan has begun a new assault on their own community. This time using the Office of Student Conflict Resolution as a disciplinary weapon aimed at 10+ students. These students are being targeted for protesting against Israel’s ongoing genocide of 2 million people in Gaza and the West Bank, which the regents of UofM (Jordan Acker, Mark Bernstein, Sara Hubbard, and Denise Illitch) actively support and profit from.

The OSCR is a notoriously corrupt department due to the regents’ rewriting of the University’s disciplinary process back in July of 2024 - stripping away student rights and allowing UM administration to punish students whenever they want for any reason, according to a report by The Michigan Daily.

Engineers Against Apartheid stands with the unjustly prosecuted community members, and condemns the University of Michigan as they continue to oppress and attack anyone who disagrees with their blood-soaked business ventures.

UMICH PROTESTORS FACING DISCIPLINARY PROCEEDINGS

The University of Michigan has initiated more disciplinary charges, including possible suspension, against pro-Palestine protestors through the Office of Student Conflict Resolution (OSCR).

DROP THE CHARGES!

The University of Michigan has a long history of targeting pro-Palestine activists as the university regents maintain investments in “israeli” apartheid. In a new round of repression, the University’s Office of Student Conflict Resolution (OSCR) has initiated disciplinary proceedings against 10+ current students and recent alumni. Students are facing various sanctions including possible suspension, and alumni are facing bans from all future interaction with the university.

Previously, the regents spent over $750,000 on recruiting outside consultants. Now, they have hired Donovan Golich to act as both the complainant and the investigator, and collaborate with UM police to gather and review selective evidence to criminalize students – completely ignoring numerous conflicts of interest. Previously, Golich was forced to resign from the University of Virginia, where he tried to revoke degrees from pro-Palestine graduates and verbally abused students in his disciplinary process with foul language and direct threats.

As Palestinians in Gaza face critical levels of famine, the University of Michigan and universities across the country are pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into investments that enable the genocide in Gaza, and into the surveillance, suppression, and criminalization of protest. The students demand complete divestment from the genocide in Gaza, and as a result have faced felony and misdemeanor charges, FBI raids on their homes, and now further displinary proceedings by OSCR. Just last week, two organizers were subpoenad in connection with the April FBI raids for Nessel’s “multijurisdictional vandlism” case.

PYM continues to stand by these brave students, and condemns the university regents’ unprecedented repression of protest.

UMICH OFFICE OF STUDENT CONFLICT RESOLUTION

IS TARGETING AND FILING CHARGES AGAINST PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTORS.

DROP THE CHARGES!

As the pro-Palestine movement continues its struggle against Universities all across the country and their investments in israel’s genocide, the University of Michigan in particular has just launched a new assault of repression.

THE UNIVERSITY’S OFFICE OF STUDENT CONFLICT RESOLUTION (OSCR), WHICH HAS BEEN WEAPONIZED BY ADMINISTRATION TO OPPRESS STUDENTS AND FACULTY, HAS JUST CHARGED 10+ PRO-PALESTINE ACTIVISTS WITH SANCTIONS, REACHING AS FAR AS SUSPENSION, FOR THEIR PROTESTS AGAINST THE UM REGENTS AND THE OVER 6 BILLION DOLLARS OF UNIVERSITY ENDOWMENT IMPLICATED IN THE GENOCIDE OF GAZA.

This is a continuation of the university’s ongoing assault against pro-Palestine protestors, as the regents have often spent university resources to promote UM police brutality at protests, recruit attorney general Dana Nessel to criminally charge activists, and even hire private investigators to stalk organizers. The regents have spent over 5 million dollars of university funds to wage war on the pro-Palestine movement.

In the ongoing OSCR charges, a recent hire by the regents, Donovan Golich, has taken on the role of both complainant and OSCR investigator in these cases, breaking the UofM’s own rules. Golich went on to state that his goal is to "educate" pro-Palestine activists on the consequences of protesting against the university. Diving deeper reveals his problematic history with student campuses, working as a disciplinary force where he has previously threatened to revoke degrees from pro-Palestine graduates at the University of Virginia, and frequently curses at students.

As israel commits a total blockade on Gaza, leaving over 80% of the population in the final stages of starvation, the University of Michigan continues to empower israel’s genocidal regime and suppress the voices of their community. USPCN stands with the pro-Palestine activists undergoing the unjust charges perpetrated by Golich, and condemns the University of Michigan and their OSCR department as they continue work in favor of profit over humanity, going as far as ruining the futures of their own students who speak out for peace and the liberation of Palestine.

NDCM Denounces the University of Michigan Board of Regents’ Repression Against Student Protesters for Palestine

July 21, 2025 / nodetentioncentersmi

The No Detention Centers in Michigan coalition extends our full solidarity to students and alumni at the University of Michigan who face vindictive new disciplinary charges from the Board of Regents as a result of their opposition to Israeli apartheid and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

The U-M Board of Regents has charged eleven current and former undergraduate and graduate students with disciplinary infractions through the Office of Student Conflict Resolution, or OSCR, for alleged participation in protests that took place in 2024. Following the withdrawal of criminal charges brought last year by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, and in the wake of revelations that the university had used undercover private security agents to spy on student activists, the administration is now engaging in retaliatory tactics to target high-profile students, including several who recently defeated those same state-level charges. The University of Michigan Police Department is partnering with a new “Office of Student Accountability” within OSCR to expand punitive measures and to impose guilty verdicts, with students facing sanctions ranging from disciplinary probation to lifetime bans on enrolling at U-M. These measures are part of a broader pattern of repression established by the Board of Regents, which threatens both the futures of individual students and the ability of all students and supporters to engage in protest on campus.

The OSCR charges—which, as organizers have warned, involve a conspicuous absence of due process—arrive at a moment when material links between Israel’s genocide and the authoritarian kidnapping regime of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have become clearer than ever in the public consciousness. In a statement of solidarity with the people of Colombia and Palestine published during the 2021 bombing of Gaza, No Detention Centers in Michigan noted that “all movements against oppression and carceral power are connected.” That statement also specifically highlighted the use of administrative detention—imprisonment without charge or trial—by both the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Israeli occupation. The same comparison was drawn this past March by Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, in a letter dictated from inside a Louisiana detention center owned and operated by the GEO Group, the company that now profits from a contract with ICE at the reopened North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin. Rümeysa Öztürk—a Tufts University doctoral student who, like Khalil, was abducted by federal agents earlier this year because of her advocacy for Palestine, and was held for months in a GEO Group facility—wrote last week: “I am free, but my true freedom is interlinked with the freedom of many women I lived alongside in ICE prison.”

We avow that the freedom of all immigrants is interlinked with the movement for Palestinian liberation, and we honor the students and workers in Michigan and around the world who have fought to raise awareness of their universities’ financial complicity in the destruction of Palestinian life and have pushed for divestment. In the case of U-M, as in many others, investments in venture capital and hedge funds tie the university not only to the Israeli military but also to surveillance systems used by ICE as they extend their anti-immigrant violence further into Lake County and around the state. It is this complicity, not the efforts of students to bring it to light and to change course, that must be resisted. Whether they originate from the Michigan Attorney General’s office or from within the University of Michigan administration, attempts to intimidate, punish, and silence these student activists must end. NDCM amplifies the demands of student organizers at U-M and calls upon the university administration and the U-M Board of Regents to take the following steps:

• Drop all OSCR disciplinary charges against students involved in pro-Palestine activism.
• Restore due-process protections in student disciplinary proceedings.
• End collaboration with undercover security contractors targeting student activists.
• Publicly account for U-M’s investments in companies implicated in both Israeli apartheid and genocide, and the U.S. detention and deportation machine, and divest immediately.

NDCM is proud to stand in solidarity with all student protesters facing administrative repression for their opposition to settler colonialism and genocide, and we look forward to witnessing both the abolition of ICE and a free Palestine within our lifetimes.

PEOPLE’S COALITION

Statement on the University of Michigan’s OSCR Charges against student activists.

The People’s Coalition is dedicated to dismantling systems of oppression, creating lasting systems that prioritize people over profit, equity over privilege, justice over inequality.

Students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members across the University of Michigan have been organizing, protesting and advocating tirelessly for an end to the atrocities being committed against Palestinians, and an end to the complicity of our governments, nationwide, state and locally.

These activists have been continually followed, stalked, harassed and threatened with prosecution for their justice-centered work; University of Michigan’s OSCR (a University entity claiming to focus on "student conflict resolution”) just announced a round of new charges against 10+ students!

We stand in solidarity with these activists, and strongly oppose efforts, whether from the University of Michigan or the state Attorney General’s office, that work to silence, intimidate, or persecute activists.

An attack on Free Speech and the right to Protest is an attack on ALL of us!

Workers Strike stands in solidarity with University of Michigan Students

Workers Strike Back supports the anti-genocide student activists targeted by the University of Michigan administration.

We demand:

• Drop all Office of Student Conflict Resolution disciplinary charges against students for protesting the ongoing genocide in Palestine
• Reinstate student workers and staff members fired for protesting genocide and reverse campus bans of student and community activists
• Remove all university regents and administration involved in the use of chemical weapons against students
• Remove all university regents and administration involved in the the ongoing persecution of student protesters
• End contracts with private security targeting student activists
• End the genocide in Gaza, all U.S. military aid to Israel, and the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank

We call on all campus unions and organizations to pass resolutions of support for the targeted protesters, and to back those resolutions up with workplace actions, with strikes, and with shutting down the University of Michigan campus until our demands are met.

The regents’ first attempt to crush the right to protest on campus failed when Michigan State Attorney General Dana Nessel dismissed all criminal charges on May 5, 2025. Scandalously, regents who donated to State Attorney General Dana Nessel’s political campaign urged her to pursue these criminal charges against students simply for protesting against the genocide.

Nessel dropped the charges under pressure from our movement, because the massive community support for the protesters turned the courtroom into, in her words, a “circus”.

Following the state’s dismissal of criminal charges, the University has now launched new disciplinary charges against students for actions that allegedly took place 10-14 months ago. For standing up against the horrors taking place in Gaza, these anti-genocide activists now face penalties that can include suspension, expulsion, revocation of degrees, and a campus hiring ban.

This latest attempt to criminalize protest against an ongoing genocide not only aids the mass murder taking place in Palestine, but threatens to criminalize any and all campus protest.

We urge all students, university workers, and anyone affiliated with the University or living in Ann Arbor to join this defense campaign.

Mass strikes, mass protests, and campus shut downs are our most effective tools to fight back against these vicious attacks on basic democratic rights, to end the US government’s arming and funding of the genocide in Palestine, and to end the Trump administraton’s attacks on immigrants and intensifying right-wing, authoritarian actions.

We call on students nationally to organize for a re-launching of mass anti-genocide campus protests this fall, tied to mass strikes by campus and non-campus unions, and mass protests of the wider antiwar movement nationally and internationally. The slaughter in Gaza must end, and we need to go on the offensive against both warmongering parties of the billionaires which have been aiding and abetting this holocaust of the 21st century.

In solidarity,
Workers Strike Back

DROP THE OSCR CHARGES!

FROM DETROIT TO PALESTINE, RESISTANCE IS JUSTIFIED!

Detroit Anti-War Committee condemns the Office of Student Conflict Resolution & UofM Board of Regent’s continued repression of students fighting for a free Palestine!