U of Michigan student president impeached after calling critics ‘Zionists’

The student government implosion wasn’t the only controversy related to Israel activism at Michigan in recent weeks.

By Andrew Lapin, JTA

The University of Michigan’s student body president entered office last semester on a campaign to shut down all “business as usual”  — including funding student groups — until the school agreed to divest from Israel.

Now that effort — one of the most sustained and assertive pro-Palestinian protests on a college campus — may be coming to an end, as the student government voted this week to impeach its president and vice president over actions related to their hardline “Shut It Down” platform.

Articles of impeachment against Alifa Anam Chowdhury, the president, and vice president Elias Atkinson passed during the assembly’s Tuesday night meeting, by a vote of 30-7 with one abstention.

The two were accused of inciting violence against other student representatives who opposed a Gaza aid measure; tarring their critics as “Zionists” on the student government’s official social media account; and, in the case of Chowdhury, “failing to fulfill the duties of her office.”

“We know that the current executive administration is sacrificing Assembly members’ safety without a second thought,” a group of student government members who backed the impeachment wrote in an October column in the student newspaper, The Michigan Daily.

Chowdhury had sought to block the disbursement of more than $1.3 million in student activity funds controlled by the student government, unless Michigan’s Board of Regents agreed to divest its endowment from Israel.

The campaign followed the groundswell of student activism amid Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas, which has devastated the Gaza Strip. Michigan, which has large Jewish and Arab student populations, has been a site of particularly intense campus activism since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, as well as a site of some reported assaults on Jewish students.

Michigan’s regents have stated they will not divest, and more organized divestment efforts have failed at other universities when put to a vote.

But Chowdhury continued to veto budget proposals until being overruled by the student assembly during a contentious meeting last month.

At that meeting, the articles of impeachment allege, Chowdhury met with activist supporters who also directed violent threats at the opposing student government members.

Those threats intensified when the student government also voted down a parallel resolution to redirect some student funds to a university in Gaza.

“President Chowdhury gravely endangered the security of students and the functioning of the Central Student Government,” the articles state.

“They thereby betrayed their trust as President, to the manifest injury of the students of the University of Michigan.”

Following the meeting, the articles state, Chowdhury changed the password on the student government’s Instagram account and wrote a post that “defamed members of CSG, falsely characterizing all members who had stood against Shut It Down as ‘zionists’, despite many not being Zionists.”

Two separate charges were filed against Atkinson, who was accused of failing to meet with student government members who were harassed at the October meeting, as well as of having failed to “meaningfully perform any meaningful work whatsoever.”

According to student government bylaws, a student trial will be held within the next few days to determine if Chowdhury and Atkinson can be removed from office.

After the impeachment vote passed, the Shut It Down party defended its actions on Instagram.

While accusing critics of “weaponizing a manufactured narrative to paint Shut It Down as divisive,” the party went on to say it “was never intended to uphold ‘business as usual’” and intends “not to maintain the system, but to dismantle it in pursuit of global liberation.”

The party also accused the student government of ignoring “urgent pleas from students on campus and voices from Palestine” by voting down the proposal to wire student money to Gaza.

They continued, “Many chose to maintain their complicity in genocide.”

The student government implosion wasn’t the only controversy related to Israel activism at Michigan in recent weeks.

The school’s faculty senate also voted to formally censure its Board of Regents on several counts, including for what they viewed as “fostering a climate of repression” after several pro-Palestinian student activists were arrested on campus, as well as for adopting an “institutional neutrality” policy.

A recent article in The Guardian also accused the regents of fostering inappropriate political ties with Dana Nessel, the state’s Jewish attorney general, who had charged nearly a dozen of the pro-Palestinian protesters.

On the Instagram page of the TAHRIR Coalition, a pro-Palestinian contingent of Michigan student groups that includes Jewish Voice for Peace, the Shut It Down party vowed to again run for student office.

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