As an organizer with the student movement demanding the University of Michigan Board of Regents divest from Israel, Zainab Hakim spent a lot of her graduation weekend in May 2024 at the protest encampment on the university's Diag.
Hakim recalled a busy 24 hours of going to graduation events in the morning, participating in a protest and getting pepper sprayed in the evening, then waking up early the next morning to attend graduation in the Big House.
Almost a year after that weekend of protesting, U of M fired Hakim and several student workers from their jobs. The university said they violated a policy prohibiting violence on campus.
“People like me who were at so many different actions, I guess it became easier to identify who we were,” Hakim said.
The fired workers are suing the university, alleging that the school violated their free speech and due process rights. Liz Jacob, one of the attorneys representing Hakim and the others, said they were peacefully protesting.
“These are nonviolent protesters advocating against war and genocide,” she said. “As we see university campuses limit and restrict speech, we will see that ripple throughout the rest of our country and the rest of our society.”
A spokesperson with the university said it does not comment on personnel matters or current litigation. Court documents submitted by the university argue that the fired workers crossed the line from protected speech to violence.
“We're not leaving until we speak to the regents.”
By Hakim’s graduation weekend, U of M’s Board of Regents had already made it clear they wouldn't talk to protesters about divesting.
But since the regents are elected by Michigan residents, the student movement felt these public officials owed them a seat at the table.
So when Regent Paul Brown and his young daughter walked by the encampment on May 3, 2024, Hakim said protesters saw their opportunity.
“People started going up to him and being like, ‘hey, why haven't you met with us?’” she said.
“It, for most of us, was the first time we would actually directly interact with one of the regents that we were trying so hard to get in the room with,” said Eaman Ali, a junior at the time.
Hakim said the protest was “totally spontaneous,” moving with Brown from the encampment to the nearby University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA).
Ali said their demand was clear.
“In the crowd, the overall sense was a commitment,” she said. “We're not leaving until we speak to the regents.”
More people arrived over the next hour as protesters spread word on social media. Protesters surrounded the building, clapping and holding signs. Hakim and a few others used megaphones to lead chants.
“Not another nickel, not another dime,” Hakim said in police bodycam footage obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. “No more money for Israel’s crimes.”
But police warned them the megaphone violated a university noise ordinance. Police said that protesters had been previously using bullhorns at full volume as “weapons,” damaging officers' hearing at close range, according to one police report.
“If you do not stop using that, which is affecting our hearing, we will take that, we will trespass you, we will escort you out and possibly arrest you,” then-Lieutenant Milot Goci from the university’s campus police told protesters.
That didn’t stop Hakim – until police confiscated the megaphones.
Later, Hakim and Ali remember linking arms with other protesters near the building. Officers ordered the line to back up from a police vehicle parked on the grass and stand on the sidewalk.
When Hakim and others stood their ground, police pushed them back. She stumbled, but held onto her water bottle and continued chanting. Ali fell back several steps, then returned to the chain.
Later in the evening, the regents got into cars to leave the private event. Officers helped control the crowd and none of the regents spoke to the protesters.
Hakim and Ali said all of that was pretty typical for a campus protest. The only difference, they said, was that the regents were within shouting distance.
Then, Hakim said the police escalated their use of force when officers began dismantling barricades. Police reports said the officers were surrounded near the UMMA.
“When the police pulled out the pepper spray and when they started pushing people back with the bicycles is when, at least for me, I was like, oh, like, this is like a new wave of things,” she said. “They haven’t done this to us before.”
Police reports describe the crowd of about two hundred as “riotous” and “aggressive.” Ali said the police were the violent ones.
“There was nothing among us to suggest that people were trying to like, assault a regent,” she said.
Hakim and Ali remember heading back to the Diag, helping other protesters rinse pepper spray from their eyes. The protest was over.
Police arrested one protester, who wasn’t a student. They didn’t issue any citations to Ali or Hakim.
Claims of violence “a total red herring.”
Hakim graduated the next day, and got a full-time job at U of M that fall. But almost a year after the UMMA protest, university officials fired her – citing her actions at the protest.
The university also fired Eaman Ali and three others from their student jobs, and banned them all from working at U of M for life.
The university told Hakim and Ali that they obstructed and “pushed back” on police. But lawyer Liz Jacob said the university hasn’t given specifics.
“They said something about how the noise of the megaphone was violent to the officer's ears,” Hakim recalled.
Hakim wondered, was it the time they all linked arms, while police pushed them back?
“That was not the first time that U of M campus police pushed me back,” she said. In fact, linking arms at protests was normal.
“It was really like nothing new,” she said. “It wasn't memorable because I'd done it a hundred times at that point.”
Court documents filed by U of M’s lawyers said Hakim received a citation for assault and battery and resisting officers at the May 3 protest. But university police and the Michigan State Police both confirmed via email that they didn’t issue any citations to her or any of the other plaintiffs at the UMMA.
Those court documents also incorrectly said that Ali was one of the 11 protesters Attorney General Dana Nessel charged with trespassing and resisting an officer when campus police cleared the encampment in May 2024. Those charges were eventually dropped.
And although university police sent Hakim, Ali, and the other UMMA plaintiffs’ cases to the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office for review, the county attorney never pressed charges.
“We never reviewed these cases substantively,” a spokesperson for the office said, and the cases were handled by Nessel’s office.
Hakim and Ali are also confused about why the university waited so long after the UMMA protest to fire them. Because the university fired three student workers in August 2024, citing their conduct at a sit-in protest in November 2023. Hakim started her job two months after those firings.
The university also filed internal disciplinary proceedings against Ali after she was fired – and after she graduated.
Jacob, the attorney, said the allegations of violence are a distraction.
“They're trying to categorize that speech as violent in order to repress the students, to be able to terminate workers, and to be able to permanently blacklist these folks from being able to work at the university,” she said.
“We are fighting back.”
Hakim has since found a new job working as a school librarian. Ali is still job hunting.
Both said they’re concerned that being fired from U of M could affect getting a job elsewhere. Termination letters said their firings would be “noted on your record.”
“To this day, I have no idea what that means,” Hakim said. U of M did not respond to questions requesting clarification.
Hakim and Ali both said they feel targeted by the university.
“If this becomes a norm, if they're able to expand this even, then it's not just pro-Palestine protesters who are going to be repeatedly punished this way,” she said. “It's going to be anybody who dissents in the university.”
Ali said without her university job, she couldn't afford rent in Ann Arbor. She moved back in with her parents in East Lansing, leaving the activist community she built while in school. She said she feels very isolated.
“I feel like what I really miss is the sense of community and the sense of belonging,” Ali said.
Jacob, Hakim, and Ali argue that these firings are part of a larger pattern of retaliation against pro-Palestine protesters on college campuses. But unlike Columbia and Barnard, which have also made headlines for disciplining pro-Palestine students, U of M is a public university.
Jacob said that makes a difference.
“That means it is accountable to all the people in Michigan,” she said. “It is a subdivision of the state.”
Ali said her biggest concern is what this case could mean for future protesters.
“If this becomes a norm, if they're able to expand this even, then it's not just pro-Palestine protesters who are going to be repeatedly punished this way,” she said. “It's going to be anybody who dissents in the university.”
Ali said she hopes the lawsuit will uncover more information about why she and the other plaintiffs were fired, and who made the decision. But she said she wouldn’t spend her college years any other way.
“I wouldn't do it differently and no, I don't regret it,” she said. “Because at the end of the day, this brings us where we are now, where we are fighting back.”
Hakim said she’s not looking for any money. But if she gets any, she’ll donate it to families in Gaza.
On campus, organizers are still pushing the regents to cut any ties with Israel. That includes Zainab Hakim’s younger sister, Amatullah Hakim, a junior studying anthropology.
“Of course I do feel worried for her,” Zainab Hakim said. “But I also feel happy and proud that she is trying to do the right thing.”
She and other activists are changing some of their tactics, but said they aren’t afraid to keep protesting.
The University of Michigan holds Michigan Public's broadcast license.
