University of Michigan regents, execs get 24-hour security as threats, harassment persist

The University of Michigan has assigned 24-hour security to its regents and executive officers in response to harassment, property damage and personal threats that began last fall and have continued through June, university officials said.

UM regents Jordan Acker, Mark Bernstein and Sarah Hubbard said during separate interviews that the university, on the advice of legal counsel, security experts and local law enforcement, assigned them around-the-clock protection in response to serious, ongoing threats to their personal safety.

Regents Michael Behm, Paul Brown, Denise Ilitch, Carl Meyers and Kathy White did not respond to requests to discuss the matter.

UM declined to release detailed information about the security coverage, including the cost and duration of current contracts, the provider of the services and the number of officials covered. The Detroit News has filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking answers to those questions.

In a general statement about the need to protect regents and executives, however, UM public affairs officials cited protests that began Nov. 17, 2023, when hundreds of protesters demanding UM divest from companies that fund military operations in Israel swarmed the university's administration building. The protests have continued on an "unacceptable level," they said.

University spokeswoman Colleen Mastony said the Michigan Constitution classifies regents as constitutional officers, which means they must be able to carry out their duties free from intimidation and threats. The same commitment extends to the university’s executive officers, Mastony said.

"Since Nov. 17, 2023, our regents and executive officers have been subjected to extensive and targeted criminal acts, including vandalism of private residences and businesses," Mastony said in a statement. "These incidents, detailed in a press release, underscore the unacceptable level of threats and harassment directed at our institution’s leaders and their families."

Mastony said security personnel are widely used to ensure safety at the University of Michigan and institutions around the nation.

"We have taken prudent steps to support our regents and executive officers and will continue to rely on our public safety team to continuously assess risk, consult with external law enforcement partners, and allocate resources commensurate with those assessments," she said.

Activists have vandalized the personal residence of UM leaders at least five times, including those of Acker and Hubbard. Vandals have left messages of "Free Palestine," "Divest" and "No Honor in Genocide" spray-painted on the front of the homes and workplaces.

Hubbard, a Republican, said her security began in December and that security has been assigned for regents and top executives at UM.

In May 2024, Hubbard's home was targeted by demonstrators who erected tents on her front lawn and left on her doorstep "scenes of genocide in Palestine," which included dolls and stuffed animals with what looked like bloodied clothing; an apparent body bag covered in red paint; and a broken baby crib.

The same day, someone tagged Hubbard's Instagram account with photos of the porch items and the message: "Regents, respond to our demands by the end of your board meeting this Thursday."

Hubbard was accompanied by security while she was on Mackinac Island for the Mackinac Policy Conference in May. She said the security is related to her university service as a regent, but she would not discuss whether it was being provided by UM Public Safety, Ann Arbor police or another agency.

"This is something that the university has decided, it's important to provide this support to their leadership. So it's the regents and it's also a number of other leaders at the university that have experienced these threats," Hubbard said.

The regent said the need for security is unfortunate. She said she serves as a regent, elected via statewide ballot, because she loves the university and wants to do everything she can to support it.

"I feel that I can have this civil debate with people who have a different opinion than I do, and so it's too bad that it has ramped up to this point where we're concerned for our safety," Hubbard said. "It's not a concern I have every moment of every day, but it's certainly something I worry about because we see it going beyond the vandalism in so many areas around the country and in the world, and we don't want to suffer that same result."

Numerous incidents of property damage have occurred at the homes of UM leaders as tensions have increased on campus following the Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack by Hamas on Israel that led to 1,200 deaths and the kidnapping of about 250 individuals. Israel's subsequent war on Hamas in Gaza left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead and an estimated $18.5 billion in infrastructure damage.

Attacks on the regents' homes and workplaces began in June 2024. That's when Acker's Southfield law office was targeted with graffiti. Vandals spray-painted "Free Palestine" and "Divest Now" on the building and sidewalk entrance to the Goodman Acker Law Firm.

The homes of several UM leaders were vandalized with pro-Palestinian messages in October. The homes of former President Santa Ono and the university's chief investment officer, Erik Lundberg, were vandalized. In March, someone spray-painted "Free Palestine" on the side of UM Provost Laurie McCauley's Ann Arbor home.

Acker told The News that he and his family were assigned around-the-clock security, and he continues to get death threats, including on June 9, after the University of Michigan was accused of using plainclothes investigators to surveil pro-Palestinian campus groups.

"Look, I don't think I had much of a choice," Acker said of the assigned security. "I mean, any time your family is being attacked for who you are and for what you believe, I think that's a pretty scary moment as an elected official, but it's unfortunately the world that we live in these days."

Acker's family, which includes his wife and three young children, continues to adjust to having security guards around them. He said the ongoing vandalism — which included having a jar of urine thrown through one of the windows of his home in the middle of the night — is unsettling.

"It's been really hard on them. It's been really hard on my wife. It's been really, really hard on my kids, especially my 10-year-old, who was woken up by the glass breaking," Acker said.

The Democratic regent said the threats have continued intermittently via email, mostly over the last few months and appear to come from the same group of protesters, which he estimated numbers about 40 individuals.

"I think they've gotten used to the fact that there's security and that's just part of life right now, but I think it's been emotionally very jarring for them," Acker said about his family. "I didn't sign up for this job to make foreign policy or to be involved in foreign policy, and for this somehow to become the central part of what people (focus on) is, it's quite bizarre."

Protesters told The News they see the situation differently.

Drin Shapiro, a recent UM graduate and a member of the pro-Palestinian group Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, said his group thinks it's ironic that the regents are claiming to be victims of harassment.

"When they have created the most unsafe environment on campus in decades," Shapiro said. "I personally have been put in jail for four days for simply handing off tape to some comrades who were putting up posters."

Shapiro was among 11 students charged by Attorney General Dana Nessel during pro-Palestinian protests in 2024. Those charges were later dismissed.

Shapiro said he also was one of many activist students followed and surveilled by plainclothes investigators hired by UM. The guards cursed at students, threatened them and, in one case, drove a car at a student who had to jump out of the way, he said. Interim UM President Domenico Grasso canceled all contracts for private undercover security on campus after the practice was publicized, saying the behavior of one security contractor employee was "disturbing, unacceptable, and unethical."

"All of this is only happening because the regents have ignored every single popular outcry demanding divestment from genocide at the University of Michigan," Shapiro said. "So ultimately, we can see that their commitment to protecting their investments in genocide has led to them massively harassing and terrorizing Ann Arbor community members who opposed Zionism."

The regents and university officials have argued that the university has had a policy for over two decades that protects UM's $17.9 billion endowment investments from political pressures. Then-UM President Santa Ono told an Anti-Defamation League forum in March that the university spent more money on Israeli institutions after pro-Palestinian activists pressured the university to divest from Israel.

Bernstein, who became chair of the UM board on June 12, said he was hopeful the troubling waves of emails, social media posts and acts of vandalism for the last six to 12 months were a temporary episode.

Then came the fire bombing of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s mansion in April, the double murder of two Israeli Embassy staff members outside the Jewish National Museum in Washington, D.C., on May 21 and the flamethrower attack on peaceful activists in Boulder, Colorado, on June 2.

Today, Bernstein said he isn't sure anymore. The Democratic regent said he hopes what is going on in Ann Arbor and around the country is not a new normal.

"But you know, over the past several weeks, those several tragic events have confirmed how dangerous, hateful rhetoric results in tragic consequences," Bernstein said. "The rhetoric in Boulder, for example, directed at public officials and that poisoned this discourse in that community isn't just similar to the rhetoric in Ann Arbor. It is exactly identical."

Bernstein said he deeply respects the activist culture on UM's campus, but he likened the harassment and intimidation tactics being used against him and other campus officials as a new form of misguided, ineffective advocacy.

"Beyond just the safety implications, it interferes with constructive engagement. It renders it almost impossible. And that does not serve their cause. It is a disservice to their cause," Bernstein said.

UM's eight regents, who serve without compensation, are among a rare group of university board members who are elected in partisan, statewide races to eight-year terms.

Across the rest of the United States, university board members are appointed. Michigan is an outlier in its statewide election of university board members, according to Michigan State University. Three other states — Colorado, Nebraska and Nevada — elect their trustees or regents through district-level elections.

While Michigan has 15 public universities, only the board members of UM, MSU and Wayne State University are chosen in elections. This practice is enshrined in the Michigan Constitution.

Hubbard said UM also has a higher profile internationally than Michigan State and Wayne State. She argued UM is being targeted by demonstrators for its history of protests and that it's among other prestigious institutions, such as Harvard and Columbia universities, that get more scrutiny compared with other schools.

"If you were to look across the country, I think you'd find that it's largely the elite universities that are experiencing this kind of turmoil and protest," Hubbard said. "This isn't happening everywhere. This is happening at Michigan, at UCLA, at Columbia, at Harvard. ... I believe strongly we're targeted by these groups in a coordinated way."

But one UM faculty member said the protests are an inevitable result of a lack of public access to university leaders.

Rebekah Modrak, former chair of UM's Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs, said university regents do not know how to respond to conflict and have walled themselves off from the community, creating a lack of engagement. She said chairs have been removed from regents' meetings, and public speaking is limited to two minutes per individual.

"They are removing themselves from access and limiting conversation, and not just in security. When people don’t have the ability to communicate, that’s when tensions build," said Modrak, a professor in UM's Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design. "They are really the ones who are creating this toxic environment. They are not victims of it."

Acker said he would prefer to focus on improving accessibility and ensuring that Michigan gets the resources it needs for the jobs that are going to be important for the next 20 years. The protesters, he said, have hijacked the conversation on how to move the university forward.

"For a long time, it was about divestment and then reported genocide. It became about (Attorney General) Dana Nessel dropping charges, and over the last few days, it's been about surveillance," Acker said.

A recent attack on one-third of the peony plants at the University of Michigan's Nichols Arboretum in Ann Arbor by vandals who left behind papers with pro-Palestinian messages is related to the threats against the regents and the university, he said.

"We are not the oversight board of Gaza," Acker said. "We do not have a role to play in the war in Gaza. It's just not something that is on our agenda on a day-to-day basis. We're really focused and making sure that our campuses are great places to learn."