Regent Hubbard portrays herself as the voice of the moderate conservative on the Board and the protector of free speech; this entails being a shrill for genocide on the Board, associating herself with corrupt GOP insiders, and raking in cash from weapons manufacturers that power the genocide.
Background and work
Hubbard’s career as a conservative lobbyist and consultant stems from her father’s involvement in local conservative politics as a Branch County Commissioner. Hubbard’s personal career in this field launched after she graduated from University of Michigan. After graduation, she worked as a legislative staffer for multiple Michigan Republicans including Nick Smith, Willis C. Bullard Jr., and Bill Martin. Hubbard, a proponent of big business, transitioned to lobbying by working for the Detroit Regional Chamber (DRC), where she represented over 20,000 clients for 17 years. The DRC is a business lobbying group, representing companies such as Amazon and Blue Cross Blue Shield. Members of the Chamber visited israel in 2017 to build relations with the Occupation, and the Chamber was the main supporter and creator of the Michigan-Israel Business Accelerator.
She then joined Acuitas LLC, a lobbying firm, where she is currently a co-owner and their Principal. Acuitas has a close relationship and often collaborates with the DRC. Acuitas LLC has a history of lobbying onbehalf of big business (Amazon), tobacco companies (Lorillard Incorporated), and big pharma (including Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Trinity Health) and many more.
Insider networks, donors, and allegiances
Like many of the Regents, Hubbard is a political insider that succeeded in her campaign to become Regent by befriending other elites. As a result, Hubbard operates with corrupt officials and genocidal donors, carrying these conflicts of interests into her position as Regent. Along with Hubbard’s own ideological justification for her support of Israel, the connections and background of her campaign contributors demonstrate the clear financial incentives for her continued support of the Occupation.
Hubbard is closely tied to Heather Lombardini, a disgraced campaign strategist that serves as treasurer for Hubbard’s campaign for her position as Regent and founder of Bright Spark Strategies, a consulting firm Hubbard hired for her campaign. Lombardini collaborated with Sandra Baxter, another lobbyist, to funnel money into Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey’s Unlock Michigan ballot initiative, through Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility, of which she was President, and Michigan! My Michigan!, of which she was treasurer. Lombardini was charged by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel in the summer of 2024, and faces several thousand dollars in fines and up to 14 years in prison for submitting an affidavit with lies around campaign finance.
Hubbard isn’t directly implicated in Lombardini’s alleged acts of campaign finance fraud, but her close relationship invites further investigation and a wary eye over Hubbard’s own finances. More importantly and more generally, Hubbard’s relationship with Lombardini is reflective of Hubbard’s general position as a political insider, with allegiances to politicians, lobbyists, and donors that she serves as Regent. After Hubbard was elected as Regent, Acuitas LLC’s client Bizfleets signed contracts in 2023 to provide electric vehicles for the University’s fleet (vehicles). Tim Easterwood, Bizfleets’ owner, had contributed $11,000 to her campaign. Radial Power recently won the bid to install solar panels at the Ann Arbor campus. Radial Power is a subsidiary of EnergyRE, which is the parent company of Southern Current LLC, another client of Hubbard and Acuitas LLC.
These donors are often prominent supporters of the Zionist entity. Jonathan Kellner and his partner Ana-Marie Wheatcroft have donated $18,500 to Hubbard’s campaign over the past four years. Kellner is the CEO of MEMX, the stock exchange that is favored by war profiteers such as Citadel and BlackRock. Kellner has visited israel at least once on a fundraising bike ride.
Robert Finvarb, a Florida hotelier whose Ann Arbor hotel was finally able to begin construction in 2022 after 10+ years of delay and evicting people during the COVID-19 pandemic, donated $3,500 to Hubbard’s campaign in August 2022. The Finvarbs are staunch Zionists, with Robert Finvarb publicly declaring his opposition to a ceasefire in Gaza. (see pics, friends with/ supporting hotel development and expansion in Occupied Jerusalem). Finvarb’s son, Jack Finvarb, just graduated from the University of Michigan, where he was the Director of Community Affairs of the TAMID group, a student club at the Ross Business school that seeks to strengthen relationships with israeli companies through fellowships and travel to israel. This group not only consults and invests in companies, but teaches those involved how to engage in the israeli market, which helps fund the genocide in Palestine.
The most incriminating of Hubbard’s ties to Zionist donors come from the Kouza family, the second largest donor to her campaign and the owner of weapons firm EOTech. EOTech was bought out by KouCar Management, the Kouza family’s corporation, in 2021. KouCar Management has a vast portfolio of real estate, hotels, and war profiteering. Not only are their products sold in the apartheid state, but the IOF acquires these products through U.S. aid and U.S. weapons and aircraft sales. EOTech supplies holographic weapon sights, holographic head up displays, night vision goggles, binoculars, and helmets to the U.S. and foreign militaries, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), law enforcement agencies, and many more. On the ground, night vision goggles and rifle scopes are used by many military ground troops, including the IOF, due to U.S. weapon sales. In the air, EOTech assists in genocide by working with Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, the U.S.’s top defense contractors. Northrop Grumman subcontracts EOTECH to manufacture sensors and electronic hardware that are used in their LITENING pods. These LITENING pods are used for target acquisition in multiple fighter jets (F-15 and F-16), bombers (B-52), and additional military aircraft including the MQ-9 Reaper and C-130. F-15, F-16, and C-130’s are all extensively used by the israeli Air Force with this technology to bomb indiscriminately. Additional development of at least 50 F-15 fighter jets were commissioned in the recent $20 billion dollar weapons package that the U.S. government gave to israel. Lockheed Martin subcontracts EOTECH to develop the weapons targeting sensors and night vision optics used in the AH-64 Apache Attack Helicopters, which are and have been used to commit genocide against Palestinians by the IOF for decades (and also were responsible for the murder of many israelis on October 7th under the Hannibal Directive).
Standing against human rights as Regent
Hubbard has stood with her Zionist donors and fellow party insiders since her election to the Board of Regents in 2020.
In Summer 2023, during the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) Strike, Hubbard claimed that the University was open to having conversations with GEO at the bargaining table, but that GEO “have been a little less active in those discussions.” She also stated that “the GSIs learned in the Spring that when they don’t work they don’t get paid,” seemingly a diss at GSIs who chose to strike for their rights as university workers to fair pay and good workplace conditions.
Even more so than the other chronically online Regent, Jordan Acker, Hubbard loves using her Twitter profile (@RegentHubbard) to condescendingly mock students and ensure her personal political goals can be enacted as University policy -- a marked contradiction to her recent push for the University to embrace "institutional neutrality." She took to Twitter after the March 2024 Regents’ meeting, and numerous times over the next several months, to state that the endowment is "shielded from political pressures," arguing that funding the genocide is not political but that divesting from the genocide would be political.
Among the Tweets she has engaged with:
- A Like to a reply from @xxxayc18: "Thank you :prayer-hands: Wish that everyone was as brave as you. Stay safe against the terror supporters on your campus"
- A Like to SilverPatriot: "Telling these communist punks and foreign operatives to take a flying leap is the correct way to deal with this."
- A Like to a reply from SteveDaily33: "She has a much more kinder way of saying 'go fuck yourselves' than me"
- A retweet of Bill Maher’s monologue to Chappell Roan, claiming that she would be “thrown off of a roof” in Gaza for being gay. As many responses noted, no evidence exists for gay people ever being thrown off of roofs in Palestine, though many have been executed by the IDF by being thrown off of roofs.
We can't tell if Hubbard is still sending Likes to Tweets these days calling activists terror supporters, telling students they should commit suicide, or telling TAHRIR to "go fuck yourselves." But our guess is that she still is, now that Likes are hidden on Twitter and she can Like away without consequence.
Hubbard takes her views to media outside of Twitter as well, in some cases supporting anti-Semitic, racist, and Islamophobic rhetoric, despite claiming to care about the safety of Jewish students. After the TAHRIR encampment on University of Michigan’s campus was violently raided by UMPD, Hubbard spoke on Jason Barclay’s radio hour. Jason Barclay is a raging antisemite and racist.
Hubbard’s latest campaign has been to push the University of Michigan to adopt a policy of “institutional neutrality,” a policy passed at the October 2024 meeting of the Board of Regents after the publication of a report written by Advisory Committee on the University of Michigan Principles on Diversity of Thought and Freedom of Expression. The amendment declared that the University would adopt a “heavy presumption against institutional statements on political and social issues that are not directly connected to internal university functions.” The irony should not be lost on readers that the institution has been far from neutral, or that the genocide in Palestine that forms the subtext of his report is separate from the university’s internal functions given the university’s profound violence exercised against antiwar activists this past year. Hubbard advocates for neutrality as she amplifies calls for violence against protesters with her handle \@RegentHubbard on Twitter, and advocates for getting rid of DEI through the same platform and at the Board of Regents’ meetings. Hubbard’s advocacy for the policy of institutional neutrality emerged through her alignment with the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), which has not only advocated for institutional neutrality but also the suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine chapters.
Several of the Regents actively market themselves as progressive. Brown and Ilitch want to be the workers’ Regents; Ilitch markets herself as a first-generation student. Acker sees himself as the “nice guy” Regent, “progressive” and open to community dialogue. But Hubbard operates with no such pretense, amplifying calls for students to commit suicide or calling them terror supporters, mocking them through her social media and during Regents’ meetings, taking money from weapons manufacturers and funneling contracts to her allies. Hubbard’s outright conservatism and bloodthirst is only possible because of the Zionist support of the Board of Regents as a whole, and because conservative and “progressive” Regents alike share a common interest of defending capital. As activists affected by the violence committed by the University of Michigan, we reject the fascist violence enabled by both Hubbard and the “progressive” Regents. We will call out their hypocrisy and their fabricated divisions among party lines until the Board serves the constituency that elected it.