Jewish regent at U of Michigan says Trump not the answer to anti-Israel campus unrest
Jordan Acker calls protesters hounding him on US Election Day a fringe, touts efforts of Harris-led Democratic Party to make American Jews ‘part of the coalition she’s building’
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
MICHIGAN — University of Michigan board member Jordan Acker arrived on campus in Ann Arbor on Tuesday in order to hand out pizza to student voters as he has in previous elections.
But this year, he was accompanied by a security detail — a precaution he was asked to take after the June vandalization of his law firm’s office building, which police are investigating as a hate crime.
The University of Michigan’s Board of Regents has been a primary target for anti-Israel student protesters who have sought unsuccessfully to coax the school into divesting from businesses and institutions connected to Israel amid the war in Gaza.
Acker says he has been personally singled out because he is Jewish, noting that non-Jewish regents with similar views have not received the same treatment.
The harassment continued on Tuesday shortly after he arrived on campus, where a handful of anti-Israel protesters managed to track him down.
The activists shouted various accusations and grievances at Acker, claiming that he “supports Israeli genocide” in Gaza and is behind the “persecution” of anti-Israel protesters who were recently indicted for trespassing and resisting law enforcement during the break-up of a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus.
Thank you for coming to campus and for the wonderful conversation @JordanAckerMI !!!
One more time since you were so shy on camera, why do you want students to be brutalized for calling for accountability from elected officials like yourself who deny and fund genocide??? pic.twitter.com/UmHwxr6Va5
— TAHRIR Coalition (@TAHRIRumich) November 5, 2024
“You’re using your power as an elected official to persecute your own political enemies,” one of the protesters could be heard shouting at Acker in a video uploaded to X by the Tahrir coalition of pro-Palestinian students groups at the University of Michigan.
The group eventually swelled to 30 protesters and Acker’s security detail had to briefly escort him back into his vehicle.
Nonetheless, Acker together with colleagues from his law firm managed to dish out pizza slices to roughly 1,000 students during their four hours on campus.
While the issue of campus antisemitism appears to be one more likely to galvanize Republican voters who have pointed to former president Donald Trump’s pledges to deport anti-Israel protesters, Acker rejected the notion that the Republican nominee is better suited to address the issue.
Speaking to The Times of Israel throughout Election Day, he explained his decision to campaign for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris over the past several months.
He recognized some initial apprehension among Jewish voters after Harris replaced US President and self-described Zionist Joe Biden as the party’s nominee in July. “But to my pleasant surprise, she’s exceeded expectations.”
Acker pointed to the Democratic National Convention in August when Harris’s aides ensured a speaking slot for the parents of American-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin. “It sent a strong message about American Jews being part of the coalition she’s building.”
He contrasted that with the DNC’s decision not to platform a representative from the Uncommitted movement of pro-Palestinian activists, who have called for an arms embargo against Israel and led a protest vote against Biden in the primaries.
Harris “has been consistent about her support for Israel’s right to defend itself after October 7, and says this everywhere she goes,” Acker continued.
“In a roundabout way, the Jewish community has come home (to the Democratic Party) in a way that I didn’t expect,” he said.
Speaking at a polling station in the Detroit suburb of Oak Park earlier Tuesday, he highlighted Trump’s pledges to dismantle the US Department of Education, which is tasked with probing incidents of campus antisemitism, which “would be devastating for Jewish students.”
Harris has issued statements condemning protesters who have harassed Jewish students, but has also expressed sympathy for pro-Palestinian activists, as she has apparently sought to avoid alienating progressive voters frustrated with the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war against Hamas.
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (L) speaks during a campaign rally at Reno Expo Center in Reno, Nevada, on October 31, 2024, and former US President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (R) arrives to speak at a campaign rally at the Rocky Mount Event Center in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, on October 30, 2024. – (Photo by LOREN ELLIOTT and CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP)
“This whole idea that the Democrats are coddling up to the campus protesters — it’s simply not true,” Acker maintained.
He said that the Harris campaign has made a point to only engage with Arab and Muslim American community leaders who back coexistence, ending meetings with more controversial figures such as Arab American News publisher Osama Siblani, who has praised Hamas and Hezbollah and met with Biden administration officials last February. While Harris’s campaign chief met with Siblani in August, Acker argued that sit-down occurred when she was still getting her footing as the nominee and that such meetings have since ceased.
“It shows that the campaign has adapted and understands who its friends are,” Acker said, juxtaposing that decision with the one Trump made in late 2022 to dine with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and rapper Kanye West, who have engaged in antisemitism and Holocaust denial.
The University of Michigan regent also pushed back against Trump’s calls to deport anti-Israel protesters residing in the US on student visas.
“What Donald Trump needs to also understand is that there’s a First Amendment in America, and you have the right to protest,” Acker said. “You don’t have the right to make people feel unsafe on campus, but this whole concept that we throw people we don’t like out of the country is, frankly, very un-American.”
While acknowledging that Democrats were initially caught flat-footed in its response to the surge post-October 7 surge in campus antisemitism, Acker said the party has since adapted its approach. The party has backed campus leaders who have begun rightfully differentiating between pro-Palestinian activists and antisemites, he claimed.
“There are groups of student leaders who are dedicated to Palestinian rights and who feel that the occupation is unacceptable, but there are others who are simply dedicated to eliminating public Jews from public life,” he said. “This is about separating those two and saying it is okay to be pro-Palestine, but it is not okay to make Jews feel uncomfortable, especially public Jews.”
Moreover, Acker insisted that the students harassing him are a fringe minority and should not be conflated with the Democratic Party.
“If there are Democrats engaged in this kind of behavior, I am committed to ridding them from the party, but the protesters targeting me today are not Democrats. These are not Kamala voters. These are Jill Stein voters,” he says, referring to the far-left, third-party presidential candidate.
Acker did try to engage in a conversation with one of the protesters but said he ended it abruptly after the student characterized testimony of Hamas’s sexual violence on October 7 as “propaganda.”
