Dear Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office, President Santa J. Ono, the University of Michigan Administration and the Board of Regents, 

We, the undersigned – including alumni faculty, staff and students of the University of Michigan – demand that the University end its pattern of harassing, threatening, and disciplining students for mobilizing against illegal occupation, apartheid, and genocide and act swiftly and decisively to demand the prosecutor’s office drop all charges against student organizers. 

Over the past two months, the University of Michigan has engaged in an escalating campaign of harassment and intimidation against Palestine liberation student activists. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan has described this campaign as one that has punished and censored students advocating for the University to divest from genocide, apartheid and occupation. Now, the University’s police force (DPSS) is  criminalizing freedom of expression and assembly  in public university buildings during open hours.

We condemn the University of Michigan’s violent repression of student protests, part of a broader nationwide effort to restrict Palestinian solidarity on college campuses. The University’s violent suppression of Palestine organizing is consistent with the University’s use of police to intimidate and repress the Winter and Spring 2023 Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) strike. And, consistent with its long history of silencing students organizing for justice. 

We demand President Ono and the Board of Regents to  call on the prosecutor’s office to dismiss all student criminal charges.

If the University of Michigan does not write to the prosecutor’s office to demand the dismissal of all student criminal charges, we will organize for President Ono’s removal and the Regents’ resignations  for repressing students’ free speech and assembly rights. 

We demand that Washtenaw County Prosecuting Attorney Eli Savit drop any pending charges against student organizers who took part in the November 17th demonstration at the Ruthven Building. 

We demand that the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office decline to prosecute any charges initiated by the police against student activists simply exercising their constitutional speech and assembly rights. If you fail to live up to the values of justice you campaigned and won on in 2020, we will organize to vote you out of office. 

Signed, 

UMich Alumni For Palestine