University of Michigan President Santa Ono, who has come under fire for his response to pro-Palestinian protesters on campus, did nothing to tamper that criticism while speaking at an Anti-Defamation League conference in Manhatten earlier this month.
Speaking on the main stage on March 3, Ono admitted he doubled down and invested more in Israel-connected institutions after pro-Palestinian supporters called for a boycott.
“My response and the board’s response to this call to divest and to cut those relationships was to actually invest even more,” Ono said, adding “great things have come out of these relationships, and more great things will come in the future.”
Ono also boasted that he stopped the Central Student Government from calling for divestment from Israel.
“I personally stepped in to stop the vote,” Ono said. “And, that’s because I thought it was wrong.”
Pro-Palestinian activists have long complained that Ono and the school’s Board of Regents have sided with Israel’s right-wing government while its military killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, about 80% of whom were civilians. Ono’s discussion at the ADL conference only amplified those concerns.
Ono, who also said he’s been involved with pro-Israel groups, suggested the pro-Palestinian encampment at the Unievrsity of Michigan that was torn down by campus police in May may have been organized by powerful outsiders, a conspiracy theory that has been repeated by many supporters of Israel without much evidence.
Hosting the discussion was Dan Senor, a staunch advocate of Israel who served as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign in 2012. Senor drew criticism after telling journalists that if Israel struck Iran’s nuclear facilities, Romney “would respect” the decision.
During the discussion, Senor asked Ono if the protests were “organic, grassroots, spontaneous, or semi-spontaneous uprising, or is there something else going on here?”
“Are there influences from outside the university that are stroking, organizing, resourcing?” Senor asked.
Ono tried to claim outsiders were to blame.
“Near the end of the encampment on the Diag, the vast majority of people had no affiliation with the university,” Ono said. “The second thing is that if you look at what’s in the encampments, the kind of materials that are there, they’re clearly not from the United States in many cases. And so, what I’ve said to a lot of my friends in government and the media is, ‘follow the money.’ There’s something behind what’s happening. And you got to find those people to actually stop this from happening.”
Over the past year, the University of Michigan has been accused of suppressing student protests, and the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of students who were banned from campus after demonstrating in support of Palestinians. The bans, which restrict students’ access to university property, drew accusations of free speech violations.
Pro-Palestinian students and alumni also filed a federal lawsuit against the university in December, alleging the school violated their constitutional rights to free speech, due process, and equal protection by silencing them.
During the ADL conference, Senor also downplayed islamophobia, saying hatred against Jewish people is far more prevalent.
“There’s a tendency, I think, especially since Oct 7, to try to universalize the outsized hate, violence, and discrimination applied to Jews and, sort of universalize it in a way that dilutes the significance of the Jewish experience,” Senor said. “You know, according to the FBI, the Jewish population in the United States is roughly 2.4% of the entire U.S. population, but accounts for 68% of hate crimes. So, there is something different going on with the Jewish community than other groups are experiencing.”
Ono responded, “I agree 100%.”
It’s unclear where Senor is getting that data, and he fails to mention that hate crimes against Muslims are increasing at a faster rate than those against Jewish people. According to preliminary data from the Crime and Justice Research Alliance, hate crimes declined last year. Still, anti-Muslim hate crimes rose 18% in 28 cities, while hate crimes against Jews increased about 11% in 35 cities.
Ono also praised Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel after she filed criminal charges against nine people involved in the pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Michigan. Nessel is the first Jewish person to serve as attorney general in Michigan, and she was booed at the Michigan Democratic Convention in Detroit last month.
“The Attorney General, Dana Nessel, has been amazing,” Ono said. “And our regents, by the way, have been amazing. They are lockstep.”
Nessel’s office was unable to cite another instance in which the AG filed charges against protesters in the last six years.
Earlier this week, U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, slammed Ono for his ties to the ADL. In a letter to Ono, Tlaib called the organization an “extremist group” with a “decades-long history of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Black racism.”
The ADL has been accused of racism and surveillance of Black activists since the 1990s. The ADL has also faced growing criticism in recent years for labeling left-wing Jewish groups, Black Lives Matter, and Palestinian rights organizations as antisemitic. In addition, the group has pushed for federal antisemitism legislation, which critics argue is designed to silence left-wing Jewish activists and pro-Palestinian advocates.
All of this comes as Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent Palestinian activist at Columbia University, was arrested Saturday and transferred to a detention center in Louisiana for his role in organizing pro-Palestinian protests. The arrest of a legal permanent resident of the U.S. without due process has alarmed civil rights advocates.
In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Tlaib and just 13 other Democrats called for the Trump administration to release Khalil.
On Monday, President Donald Trump said Khalil’s arrest and possible deportation will be the first “of many to come,” pledging to crack down on campus protests against Israel and the war in Gaza.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
