A leaked recording of the University of Michigan president reveals just how institutionalised the disregard for the wellbeing of Arab and Muslim students has become.
On October 7, the Tahrir Coalition, a union of pro-Palestinian organisations at the University of Michigan, posted on social media what it said was a recording of the university’s president, Santa Ono.
In the audio file, a man’s voice can be heard talking about pressure from “powerful groups” and the threat of withholding federal funding if the university administration does not focus almost exclusively on combating anti-Semitism.
He states: “The government could call me tomorrow and say, in a very unbalanced way, the university is not doing enough to combat anti-Semitism. And I could say it’s not doing enough to combat Islamophobia, and that’s not what they want to hear.”
Although the Tahrir Coalition did not explain how they obtained the recording or when and where it was made, neither Ono, nor the university disputed its authenticity. Instead, the university administration issued a statement to the local newspaper Metro Times, saying: “The University of Michigan is steadfastly committed to ensuring our community remains a safe and supportive environment, where all students – regardless of race, religion, ethnicity or other identities – have the opportunity to learn and thrive.”
The problem is that the university is not committed to the safety and support of Muslim and Arab students. Of course, we did not need the leaked recording to know that, but it does provide the general public with an explanation of the university’s utter failure to support marginalised students.
Over the past year, we have watched in shock as mass slaughter has unfolded in Palestine – and, since September, in Lebanon. Israel has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, including more than 16,000 children, and more than 2,300 Lebanese, including more than 120 children.
For Palestinian and Lebanese students, the pain is acute. We have watched our homelands destroyed, our people slaughtered, tortured and starved. Yet, as we, along with many allies, have tried to process this trauma and advocate for human rights, we have been vilified and silenced on campus. Our existence has been reduced to a problem, our grief weaponised, our calls for justice criminalised.
The same cannot be said about students who have actively advocated for Israel’s “right to self-defence” – a right that Israel does not have when it comes to resistance from a population it is occupying.
The effect of this “unbalanced” approach is that today Muslim and Arab students face increased harassment and discrimination, and their attackers are only emboldened because they know there will be no consequences for what they do.
The university’s hypocrisy became apparent to me and other Palestinian students almost immediately after October 7, 2023. On October 9, students at the Michigan Law School used the public law-open server, an email chain that connects everyone at the law school, to describe Palestinians as “animals” and their Muslim and Arab classmates as “rejoic[ing] in mass murder” and supporting rape. This language was reported to the administration, who took no action.
As the greater Michigan student body started organising and protesting on campus, the university’s discrimination against marginalised students became even more apparent. It repeatedly sent campus police to disperse our protests and sit-ins, with students being physically assaulted, pepper-sprayed and arrested, while hijabs of female students were ripped off.
It also ramped up surveillance. Police presence and the number of surveillance cameras around the Arab lounge on campus noticeably increased.
The administration never issued any apology for nor condemnation of the extreme acts of police violence against students who were protesting a genocide that the university funds.
It also did not act as accusations of anti-Semitism started being weaponised against us. It did not step in to differentiate between hatred against the Jewish people and the legitimate criticism and denunciation of genocidal Israel. It did not protect our right to protest and freedom of expression. Instead, it seemingly accepted the false equivalence of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.
Over the summer, the Department of Education released a report about the supposed “failure” of the university to act on accusations of anti-Semitism. Among them were claims that anti-genocide protests created a “hostile environment” which the university did not investigate.
The university easily succumbed to pressure and unilaterally changed campus policies to facilitate its crackdown on students engaging in pro-Palestinian activism. It did not consult faculty or the student body about them.
The university administration has gone out of its way to address the sentiments of Jewish students on campus but has yet to utter one word to us, the Palestinians. One has to wonder how many more Palestinians have to be exterminated before Ono and the rest of the university leadership recognise our suffering, or if they even see us as human at all?
Muslim, Arab and Palestinian students increasingly feel that our administration is fully comfortable with our people being slaughtered and our land being carpet-bombed.
This attitude isn’t unique to the University of Michigan. Nationwide, more than 3,000 people have been arrested for pro-Palestine advocacy on college campuses in just six months. Universities that once championed free speech have become hostile environments for Muslim and Arab students and their allies.
The chilling effect this has had is palpable. Many Muslim and Arab students now feel unsafe expressing their identities or views, fearing academic, legal and job prospect repercussions. For Palestinian students, this silencing is particularly traumatic – we are denied the right to mourn publicly or call for justice.
Adding to our pain is the fact that our tuition dollars are invested in companies supporting violence against Muslims and Palestinians abroad. Despite protests, the University of Michigan maintains investments in companies linked to Israel, even though it was quick to divest from companies linked to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
In response to the leaked audio, the Council on American-Islamic Relations Michigan Chapter (CAIR-MI) filed a complaint with the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights. The complaint calls for an investigation into whether the University of Michigan has followed “its obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act as well as its obligations under a Consent Resolution the University entered into with the Office of Civil Rights in June of this year”.
However, given that the pressure on universities to focus on the wellbeing of Jewish students comes from the federal government itself, it is doubtful this complaint will yield any significant results.
Ono’s leaked comments reveal a broader abdication of moral leadership by university administrators nationwide. By yielding to external pressures, they fail to protect all students equally, sending a clear message that some lives matter more than others.