ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY THREE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Ann Arbor, Michigan
CAMPUS LIFE
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UMich students gather for pro-Israel rally
The rally marks six months since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel ARNAV GUPTA
Daily Staff Reporter
More than 100 University of Michigan students and community members gathered on the Diag Wednesday afternoon for a rally marking six months since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Student representatives from Wolverine for Israel, Michigan Hillel, Chabad House and the Jewish Resource Center spoke at the event, and Rabbi Alter Goldstein recited Psalm 122, a prayer for peace. On Oct. 7, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, which Israeli officials said resulted in about 1,200 casualties and 240 hostages being captured by Hamas. LSA junior Evan Cohen, president of Wolverine for Israel, said in his speech that the purpose of the rally was to commemorate the lives lost in the attack and call for the safe return of the hostages. “We’re here today to remember the atrocities of six months ago and to rally to bring our hostages home,” Cohen said. “As Jews, we always manage to find the light. We know the morally right from wrong and we stand proud with our Jewish values. Continue to take care of one another. Continue to donate to humanitarian efforts in Israel.” In an interview with The Michigan Daily, LSA junior Ryan Silberfein, chair of the governing board at Michigan Hillel, said she believes the rally provided a space for pro-Israel community members to come together on campus. “We have to walk through protests almost every week on this
TESS CROWLEY/Daily Wolverines for Israel hosts a rally commemorating six months after Oct. 7 to show support for Israel and demand the hostages are brought home on the Diag Wednesday afternoon.
campus that are very upsetting to a lot of us,” Silberfein said. “Another aspect of (the rally) was being able to show people that we are still here on campus, whether or not we are disrupting classes, we are still here, and while other people get to protest too, we want to show that we can do a peaceful rally as well.” The rally was met with some resistance, as a group of about 15 pro-Palestine students stood on benches and held up signs
GOVERNMENT
Inaugural Ford Dean’s Symposium hosts Cecilia Muñoz, Alondra Nelson Muñoz spoke on U.S. social policy while Nelson discussed artificial intelligence at the intersection of policy and civil rights SHANE BAUM & ANDREW BAUM
Daily Staff Reporters
The Ford School of Public Policy hosted the first day of the inaugural Dean’s Symposium Thursday. The symposium, entitled “Policy Innovation for Our Times,” will include keynote speakers, panels and discussions regarding issues like child care, climate change, racial justice policy and artificial intelligence and technology. During the morning portion of the event, 30 U-M community members gathered in Annenberg Auditorium to listen to a discussion on U.S. social policy between Public Policy Dean Celeste Watkins-Hayes and Cecilia Muñoz. Muñoz, a U-M alum, served as director of the Domestic Policy Council from 2012 to 2017 and director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs from 2009 to 2012 under former President Barack Obama. Before her appointment to the Obama administration, Muñoz was a senior vice president for the National Council of La Raza, now UnidosUS, the nation’s largest Latinx advocacy organization. She is the first Hispanic person to serve as Domestic Policy Council director. Muñoz opened the discussion by emphasizing the importance of public policy when addressing current political issues. “Public policy is a major
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tool. It’s not the only tool, but it is a major tool for which we can collectively address the problems, and we have big problems,” Muñoz said. “My daughters are 28 and 31, and they worry that we lack the capacity to solve our problems together, and I don’t believe that we do. I think there are things to be considered and alarmed about, but we have that capacity, and our biggest enemy, honestly, is cynicism.” When Watkins-Hayes asked about her thoughts on the government service workforce, Muñoz said she believes government employees are necessary for a working democracy. “The job is to be there no matter what and to implement the law no matter what,” Muñoz said. “Their job changes if you change the law. Their job doesn’t change if you change the president and that is essential in a democracy.” Muñoz said that with the 2024 general elections approaching, it is necessary to educate people on social policy because it influences Americans’ everyday lives. “We have fallen into this notion that hardcore economic issues come first and maybe we can get to social policy,” Muñoz said. “That’s the kind of order that shows up in Washington. We are seeing movements begin to assert a different philosophy around social policy, which is, ‘We can’t function unless we take care of this.’ ” Read more at MichiganDaily.com
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including messages such as, “AntiZionism ≠ Anti-Semitism” and “Jewish Students Say: Down With Imperialism.” In an email to The Daily, Social Work student Cora Galpern, outreach chair for the U-M chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, said the phrases on the signs were meant to highlight how the Jewish and Palestinian struggles are connected. “Our signs emphasized the
intersection between Jewish safety and Palestinian liberation, drew attention to the thousands of Palestinians being held hostage in Israeli prisons and highlighted the distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism,” Galpern wrote. “We chose this messaging because it was consistent with the values that Judaism has instilled in us — that every life is sacred, that we must welcome the stranger, and that Tikkun Olam (repair the
world) is an obligatory and ongoing practice.” In an interview with The Daily, Engineering junior Jonathan Bandel, president of Chabad at Michigan, said the organizations behind the rally saw it as a way to publicly reaffirm their support for Israel. “We’re also just trying to show that nobody will intimidate us and that there’s always going to be two sides of every story,” Bandel said.
“We’re going to stand firm with our stuff, and we’re always going to do what we think and what we believe in.” Attendees at the rally held up Israeli flags and posters with the faces of hostages on them. Engineering freshman Ella Mendelson told The Daily she attended the rally to stand against rising antisemitism.. “I wanted to show support for my people, and I am fortunate enough to be able to be on this campus and be able to come out and attend one of these rallies,” Mendelson said. “I wanted to be here to show the side that doesn’t get talked a lot about, which is that we are just truly a peaceful people, peacefully protesting against antisemitism.” In a later interview, Cohen said the rapidly evolving nature of the Israel-Hamas war requires a strong focus on student support and an emphasis on inclusion. “This conflict is continually evolving, and our campus also continually evolves,” Cohen said. “Our biggest focus is to support our students — support them, help them, make them feel like they have a place on campus and ensure that they don’t feel intimidated and feel safe.” LSA sophomore Dani Portnoy, Jewish Resource Center president, said the three organizations at the rally — Hillel, Chabad and the JRC — are available to provide support to Jewish students. “We’re strong — we’re not going anywhere,” Portnoy said. “Hillel, Chabad and the JRC are here for Jewish students to support them in any way they need during this time.”
ADMINISTRATION
Inclusive History Project examines UMich history of discrimination and activism
The project retells U-M history to help inform future U-M decision making ANNA JAVIER
Daily Staff Reporter
The University of Michigan Inclusive History Project works to expand and support research that examines the University’s history through the lens of diversity, equity and inclusion. The IHP aims to construct a comprehensive retelling of U-M history from all three campuses to help inform future decision making for the University. Housed in the National Center for Institutional Diversity, the project is led by co-chairs Elizabeth Cole, and Earl Lewis. Commissioned by former University President Mary Sue Coleman in 2022, the IHP formed a framing and design committee to develop a five-year plan that defines their research priorities, nominates new topics of research and articulates the values of the project. Since the release of their first report in July 2023, the IHP has built upon that base by launching new research endeavors and extending support to external projects. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Lewis explained that the concept of IHP has been years in the making. While officially announced under Coleman’s leadership, the creation of the IHP was a recommendation by former University President Mark Schlissel prompted by the controversy over the name of Yost Ice Arena. “The IHP was created almost two years ago as an idea coming out of the actions of a previous entity called the President’s Advisory Committee on University History,” Lewis said. “There had been a recommendation to take Yost’s
name off of the ice arena, and the concern is that that would be done as a one-off and not in full context, so President Schlissel at the time reached out to see whether we could do a more comprehensive review of the University’s history of inclusion and exclusion.” Lewis said the IHP emphasizes reparative action as an outcome of examining history. This tenet serves as the common thread among the IHP’s diverse topics of research. “What we wanted to do as part of the IHP is not only to reexamine histories, but also to ask, ‘Are there things that need to be fixed or repaired?’” Lewis said. According to IHP managing director Jenni Brady, given that the University is a decentralized community, it was important for the IHP to expand its capacity and build a team that would represent all three campuses. The committee appointed three directors of research for each campus: Camron Amin for U-M Dearborn, Lisa M. Lapeyrouse for U-M Flint and Jay Cook for the Ann Arbor campus. “We know that we have a big expansive scope, but we don’t have to do everything at once,” Brady said. “And so the more people who come in, the more outreach and involvement and engagement we can do.” Cook led the 1817 Project, one of several new research projects that have begun under the IHP. The 1817 Project: Land, Culture, Memory, and Repair digs into the University’s historical relationship with Indigenous people through archival examinations of federal land grants and other sources of funding. In an interview with The Daily, Rackham student Richard
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Bachmann said he became a research associate with the 1817 Project after reaching out to Cook in search of research opportunities that intend to interact with a broader community beyond academia. “I like the fact that I’m not just writing this for 10 people at a conference, but potentially also for a larger audience,” Bachmann said. “Not every historian can pull something off like the 1619 Project that has this immediate, huge impact, so I thought I liked that collaborative aspect of the research.” Bachmann said the research sheds light on the responsibility the University holds in the eradication and repression of Indigenous communities. “You can make the argument that the University has, first of all, profited immensely from Indigenous land dispossession,” Bachmann said. “But it also, as an institution, plays an important role in what we call, often abstractly, this project of settler colonialism because it is a player in the land — the flipping of lands and the transformation of land into financial assets.” According to Lewis, the IHP also recognizes that research of
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this kind has been happening, even prior to its formation, so in conjunction with their objective to initiate research is the intention to support existing projects. “We realized that there was a lot of activity already on campus,” Lewis said. “There were faculty who had already been engaged in the examination of the University’s past. They were working on public history projects, working on books, working on student land projects on the Ann Arbor campus, on the Flint and Dearborn campuses, and so we realized that we were building on the work that had already been started.” With the hope of supporting projects that operate outside of the IHP, two grants were introduced to the campus community: the IHP Research and Engagement Fund, which offers funding to faculty to pursue research and creative endeavors that dig into the University’s history, and the IHP Teaching Fund, which enables faculty to design new courses or implement IHP-related elements into existing courses. Read more at MichiganDaily.com
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