Jordan Acker used his position as Regent of the @umich.edu to wage a vendetta against student protesters and to dox faculty who wouldn't serve as his mouthpiece. Now, he wants to be reelected. This is his campaign photograph.

If you’re registered Democrat in Michigan, please join me to support Amir Makled for UM Regent at the convention in April.

Thanks to @isaackamola.bsky.social for this generous endorsement of In the Spirit of H. Chandler Davis. Released today! Available everywhere. To order > disobediencepress.com

PUB DAY of In the Spirit of H. Chandler Davis, the remarkable set of essays inspired by the UMich prof fired in 1954 for refusing to testify to HUAC. The book’s 12 contributors argue against the suppression of protest, the policed campus, and other enemies of academic freedom. disobediencepress.com

The University of Alabama has put allegiance to Trump over the 1st Amendment. They’ve shut down the student magazines that focus on experiences of women and Black students.

Declining accommodations for a cancer patient?? New low at UMich

When I chaired the Faculty Senate last year, Regent Jordan Acker, enraged that he couldn’t control faculty voice, doxxed me on social media. UM police installed security cameras on my home to protect me from his threats. Now Acker wants to be re-elected. @aft.org is considering an endorsement

Shall we sacrifice the people, families, businesses, and environmental well-being of Yspilanti on the altar of TechBro fantasies? This UM prof says NO. @silkyweineck.bsky.social @umdeidefense.bsky.social @rebekahmodrak.bsky.social

UM Regents Paul Brown and Jordan Acker are trying to get on ballot for re-election. They refused to hear reports from Faculty. Dismantled DEI at UM. Stopped gender-affirming care at UM Medicine. Expelled students who criticized Israeli actions in Gaza And yet, aft.org is considering endorsing them

@umich.edu faculty call for an honorary degree for Trump “We have proven that we have no hard moral principles and no hill on which we will die.” www.michigandaily.com/opinion/op-e...

“The African American unemployment rate has surged over the past four months, from 6 to 7.5 percent, while the rate for white people ticked down slightly to 3.7 percent.”

From the @michigandaily.bsky.social Editorial Board: “We now see [the University of Michigan administration’s changes to the student code of conduct] as a catalyst, accelerating the construction of a disciplinary apparatus that the University can aim at whoever it deems threatening.”

Some public school teachers are courageously protecting kids rights to access all material, despite threats and retaliation. Thank you to @palan57.bsky.social at @forbes.com for shining a light on their remarkable stories. More than ever, we need heroes to be visible.

This Tuesday in Ann Arbor. A reading about attempts to intimidate and silence academics.

University of Michigan faculty and staff speak up about what we want in our new president. (post-Ono) @michigandaily.bsky.social @silkyweineck.bsky.social @sbagen.bsky.social @basit-zafar.bsky.social @yiliw.bsky.social @drgigiawad.bsky.social

Ohio State University has banned land acknowledgements. But there's no ban on ceding the land and the institution to indigenous people. Even the Heritage Foundation recommends this. Buckeyes, this is your moment. www.heritage.org/progressivis... @ohiostatelaw.bsky.social @osuhistory.bsky.social

A lakh is 100,000, so ~300,000 (331,602 to be exact in 2024) students from #India study in US every year, paying $8 billion to US economy. There were ~1300 #Indian students at UMich alone. I met one recently, and he's counting days to finish degree and leave US Our campus will lose millions of $

Why we need DEI

Guidepost Solutions' chairman is monitoring the extortion of Columbia by Trump. U. of Michigan regents, all on their own, hired "consultants" from Guidepost last year to comb through video tapes to harass and attempt to expel students who protested the war on Gaza.

Regent Bernstein makes a mockery of First Amendment rights. According to the state charter, regents have no authority to meddle in hiring decisions, let alone to subject members of our campus to their petty whims and biases. Donating $$ to the Dems shouldn’t protect him.

U-Mich's Regent Bernstein overrides the assessment of UM administrators and tells the General Counsel to immediately terminate Rachel Dawson, our director of multicultural initiatives. Our regents have turned U-M's campus into a theater where they act on their biases and pettiness.

I love the Michigan Daily. “the relative silence from the regents surrounding their efforts to commit acts of espionage against their own student body is alarming. Their response …shows that even despite the accusations, the regents have no interest in taking responsibility for their actions.”

Bravo to the Mississippi educators seeking a restraining order to the law prohibiting educators from teaching students about issues "related to race, sex, color, gender identity, sexual orientation or national origin.” @insurgentprof.bsky.social

@cantb.bsky.social on the federal government forcing UVA's president to resign. (Inside Higher Ed)

Here's the problem: Universities' recent embrace of "institutional neutrality" policies are at odds with their goals to help students develop as thoughtful, moral citizens. Gift link.

“Accordingly, the Trump administration has engaged in selective outrage about discrimination, focusing disproportionately on a supposed rampant anti-White racism problem in this country that is not supported by data, while remaining silent about prevalent discrimination against racial minorities.”

"At a moment when higher education is in the political crosshairs, Ono appeared to some like he was more interested in joining the snipers than fighting back alongside his academic brethren." www.chronicle.com/article/he-w...

“Leadership requires moral clarity, not strategic evasion. Students were followed, harassed, and criminalized under your watch. History will remember.” @professorjvh.bsky.social May U-M Faculty report to regents re: excessive surveillance: regents.umich.edu/files/meetin...

How did Santa Ono lose a one-man race? Professor @silkyweineck.bsky.social writes: “Perhaps it was the instinctive bipartisan contempt most of us feel for blatant pandering: Ono’s assurances that he would follow orders had .. an eagerness to humiliate himself that does not signal leadership.”

The Chronicle is tracking higher ed’s dismantling of DEI efforts.

“In his opening remarks, Ono spent much of his time on the political defensive. He forswore DEI, pledged to combat antisemitism, beat back charges that he’s a climate-change fanatic, and assured the board that he’s no longer issuing land-acknowledgement statements to honor Indigenous people.”

“By giving in, the capitulating firms and universities will learn a lesson from the streets that Mr. Trump knows better than they do: Borrowing money from a loan shark isn’t simply adding a new monthly expense; making that kind of deal is a way of life.” www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/o...

My colleagues @scottlgreer.bsky.social and Julie Boland write that Ono “created a polarized mess that hurt the university, and his intransigence led to staff being fired with no warning just weeks ago. A new president should accept that Michigan is a socially engaged and active university.”

Santa Ono, in 2023, was asked (not under duress) about his commitment to DEI. m.youtube.com/watch?v=pXKo...

In 2023, Santa Ono 1.0 explains why DEI is personally important to him. Ono 2.0 is now telling U-F that DEI is “about ideology.”

Ono cut ODEI at UM to prove himself to UF: "Some of the things I hear is not everyone is included in the support that's provided," Ono said. "To me, it's an American thing to support all students as opposed to just some of the students.”

In honor of Santa Ono leaving U-M for the University of Florida, it seems only fit that our U-M Graduate Student Employees organization should issue his final report card.

My artworks recreate dubious brand messaging to explicitly state the implicit. So when U-M launched the Ono presidency in 2022 (after a series of devastating sex abuse scandals) with a choreographed video of “university pres as mascot” in the spirit of Glee and Bye Bye Birdie, I assembled a team.

Ono goes to Florida to continue playing dead.

This disregard for democratic or parademocratic norms is unacceptable, and it does not bode well for the future when regents can publicly decry “authoritarian regimes” while themselves acting without regard for the consent of the governed.” 2/2

“To date, neither the regents nor our administration have publicly acknowledged the fact that more than 3,000 senate members asked them to defend academic freedom … and restore, within legal parameters, the DEI initiatives they abandoned. 1/2 @silkyweineck.bsky.social

Ohio University announced that it is shuttering its diversity, equity and inclusion offices, including the Multicultural Center, Pride Center and Women’s Center. nbc4i.co/3SgzRNO?utm_...

If you’re craving serious examples of bad-ass women, I just published a single-essay book about Arijana Lekić-Fridrih, who has literally been standing up to confront the men praying for “male authority” en masse in public squares in Croatia. disobediencepress.com/arijana-leki... #womensrights

The University of Michigan Faculty Senate approves a mandate to protect our core values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Our vote is a “binding action of the University faculties.” In response, U-M Provost McCauley directs deans to remove the term DEI from websites.

"We need a wartime president." @umich.edu @silkyweineck.bsky.social archive.ph/aIjEA

In discovery, @umich.edu attorneys learned that (1) faculty colluded to sabotage a promotion and (2) one professor signed their name to a review that was actually written by their conspirator, another professor. 1/2

In addition to not having the facts (such as the 87% increase in Black student enrollment since 220, Acker joins the growing group of U-M administrators who can’t seem to use the words “Black students” anymore.