JTA — A pro-Israel Jewish member of the University of Michigan’s governing board is on his way out after Democratic leaders in the state instead backed a pro-Palestinian attorney with a history of antisemitic and pro-Hezbollah rhetoric for the spot.
Jordan Acker will not run for reelection on the Board of Regents in November, when Michigan voters have the task of choosing members of the board. Instead, the state Democratic Party candidate will be Amir Makled, who received the party’s backing, even after losing an endorsement following revelations of his social media activity.
Makled is allied with progressive Michigan US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who has prompted controversy in the primary race with his criticism of Israel. In a pre-taped CNN interview that aired Sunday, just before Makled was selected, El-Sayed called the Israeli government as “evil” as Hamas and said, “Killing tens of thousands of people makes you pretty damn evil.”
Just before the convention, Makled, an attorney, had deleted posts that included retweets of far-right antisemitic conspiracy theorist Candace Owens; memes and cartoons with antisemitic connotations; and references to former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as a “martyr” after he was killed by Israeli strikes in 2024.
After the press resurfaced the posts, the Michigan branch of the Service Employees International Union rescinded its support for him, citing “new information that was not available at the time our endorsement was made.”
Acker, meanwhile, faced reports days before the convention that, as regent, he had sent sexually explicit Slack messages in 2020 and 2021 about Michigan students and a Democratic Party strategist. Those messages included a reference to a student’s parent as a “joo,” slang for Jew. His attorney questioned the authenticity of the messages to The Guardian, which first reported them.
ENDORSEMENT: I am proud to announce the support of Michigan Laborers District Council! #UnionStrong pic.twitter.com/s15CUCphCs
— Jordan Acker (@JordanAckerMI) April 16, 2026
The revelations came amid an unusually supercharged race for the party’s endorsement for the Board of Regents candidacy, at a time when perspectives regarding Israel are reshaping Democratic politics across the United States. (Michigan is one of only a handful of states in which voters play a direct role in choosing university overseers.)
Amid national polls showing that Democratic voters largely disapprove of Israel, Makled’s selection adds to signals that the pro-Palestinian wing of the party appears to be ascendant in Michigan, which has a large number of both Jewish and Arab voters.
“This is what happens when people decide that something better is possible,” Makled said in his victory speech at the party’s Detroit convention on Sunday. He was enthusiastically backed by the university’s newly elected student body president, the latest in a series of outspoken pro-Palestinian students to hold the position.
At the same convention, a speech by US Senate candidate Haley Stevens, who is seen as the preferred candidate of pro-Israel voters, was booed by delegates.
Neither Acker nor Makled responded on Monday morning to requests for comment from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The two had taken center stage in the pro-Palestinian encampment drama at the university after October 7, with Michigan’s attorney general bringing charges against a group of protesters, and Makled coming to their defense; the charges were later dropped.
Acker’s home was also vandalized in 2024 by pro-Palestinian protesters, some of whose homes were later raided by federal authorities.
Good lord, what’s happening in Michigan?
University of Michigan regent candidate Amir Makled was caught deleting posts praising Hezbollah leaders.
Weeks ago, a Hezbollah-aligned terrorist in West Bloomfield MY tried to murder 140 Jewish kids. pic.twitter.com/wEfNI39pJN
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) April 10, 2026
At a campaign rally for El-Sayed earlier this month, Makled told JTA that he stood by his defense of the encampment while condemning the attack on Acker’s home.
“It’s a public space and they have the opportunity to voice their concerns and speak their minds to the university. They’ve done so peacefully,” he said then. “And I thought that was their right. And I stood firmly to defend them and that right to speak out. You know, there are ways to have some good trouble.”
Makled continued, “I wouldn’t have stood in support of malicious destruction of someone’s personal property or home, because that’s stoking fear in a person’s private life that was serving in public office. And I don’t know who decided to make those choices, but they shouldn’t be said in the same conversation or sentence of what was happening in the Diag” — referring to the central campus space where the encampments took place.
The El-Sayed event — which also featured the streamer Hasan Piker, who himself has been accused of antisemitism and repeatedly said he believes Israel is worse than Hamas — took place before the revelations about Makled’s social media posts.
Negative campaigning took an ugly turn during the Board of Regents race. Anonymous text messages to state Democratic Party donors claimed that Acker — who has met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog — would “put Israel first.” Though designed to look like pro-Acker ads, the texts were denounced by the state’s Democratic Party for playing on “dual loyalty” tropes about Jews.
One of the two Republican nominees for the board, meanwhile, is Lena Epstein, an oil executive and Trump supporter who was raised Jewish but said in 2023 that a local pastor had “baptized me into the Christian faith.”
In a recent interview with the student newspaper, The Michigan Daily, Epstein said she would fight antisemitism at the university, which she called “an antisemitic hotbed,” pledging that “anti-Israel sentiment will go down significantly” if she is elected. A co-chair of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign in Michigan, Epstein attracted controversy in 2018 for inviting a Messianic “rabbi” to pray for the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.
