In an unusual quirk of electoral politics, voters in Michigan are able to choose the governing boards of major public universities in statewide elections. Several are on the ballot this November.
Members of the University of Michigan Board of Regents, Michigan State University Board of Trustees, and the Wayne State University Board of Governors serve uncompensated for eight-year terms, and are elected two at a time in staggered, two-year cycles.
As part of a series of candidate profiles for the state’s three publicly elected university boards, Michigan Public sat down with the Democratic and Republican candidates for U of M’s Board of Regents to discuss their campaigns, platforms, and hopes for the future of the university.
The Republican Party’s nominees for regent are Lena Epstein and Michael Schostak. Epstein is the co-owner of Vesco Oil Corporation, and unsuccessfully ran for regent in 2022. Schostak is the treasurer of Bloomfield Township and a former finance lecturer at Wayne State University. Epstein is generally considered to be running to the right of Schostak, who has worked to portray himself as a moderate during his campaign.
The Democratic Party’s nominees, Amir Makled and Paul Brown, emerged after a tense three-way contest between progressives and moderates in the party’s state nominating convention.
Makled, a civil rights attorney from Dearborn, defeated incumbent regent Jordan Acker through an insurgent campaign that criticized U of M’s surveillance of student protesters and compliance with several of the Trump administration’s policies. Brown, an incumbent regent who is generally considered to be one of the board’s more liberal members, was renominated with comparative ease.
The candidates from each party are not running as a ticket in the traditional sense. Voters can select up to two candidates for regent, but may also vote for fewer, and are able to vote for two candidates from different political parties if they wish.
This year’s board race has proven unusually contentious, producing some unconventional cross-party endorsements. Acker refuses to vote for his replacement, and has instead endorsed Brown and Schostak. The editorial board of the Michigan Daily, U of M’s student newspaper, endorsed Makled and Schostak, opposing any candidates affiliated with the current board.
Like many elections across the country, the regents race is heavily centered around affordability. U of M is the most expensive public institution in the state, but has become cheaper over time for many students due to the Go Blue Guarantee — a financial aid policy which covers the tuition of in-state undergraduate students from families with yearly incomes and assets less than $125,000.
The Democratic candidates are campaigning on the success of the program, which was greatly expanded during Brown’s time on the board. Both support U of M’s current plans to expand the program to select graduate degrees; Makled also supports a broad tuition freeze. The pair also want to reduce the cost of attendance students experience outside of tuition.
“You have to look at the entire totality of what the experience is of attending an institution like U of M,” Makled said. “What are our students paying for when it comes to housing, what are they paying for food and transportation and books and childcare?”
The Republican candidates are also campaigning on affordability, though their focus is slightly different. Epstein, like Makled, has called for tuition to either be frozen or cut entirely. Schostak wants to expand the Go Blue Guarantee by removing home equity from its assets calculation, which would allow homeowners under the income threshold to qualify.
“That home equity is worthless to them,” Schostak said. “They can't do anything with it unless they were to sell their house. And I don't think we want to be a school that tells people that to pay for an education, they’ve got to sell their house.”
Like many colleges, U of M has felt significant pressure from the Trump administration since 2024, and in many cases it has chosen to comply rather than fight. The university ended its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs to avoid cuts to federal funding, and stopped providing gender-affirming care to patients under the age of 19 in response to a federal subpoena.
Makled has consistently campaigned on a stronger response to the Trump administration, and wants U of M to work with other universities facing similar federal disputes. Brown’s record is more mixed; he has previously defended U of M’s conciliatory actions, but has also called for the university to do more. He is now working to emphasize his anti-Trump credentials.
“I am now the named plaintiff, as a board member, in 11 suits against the Trump administration, suing them from everything from his attacks on trans rights to cancer and climate change research to immigration and visas for our scholars,” Brown said. “The university, as the premier public institution in the country, I think, must take a leadership role in that national debate.”
The two Republicans do not want U of M to be on bad terms with the Trump administration, and believe their party affiliation could help smooth over existing tensions. “We want good workings with government entities, seeing that this is a public university,” Epstein said.
However, Schostak is not pleased with many of Trump’s actions, and believes U of M must protect its own interests when threatened.
“I understand that when the federal government came in and threatened to cut a billion dollars in research grants, that the university had to respond to that in the near term,” Schostak said. “You need to protect the financial well-being of the institution.”
Given the statewide nature of the race, the candidates have focused on the ways in which they would benefit communities across Michigan. The Republican candidates want to significantly increase the percentage of in-state students, who currently constitute a slim majority at U of M's Ann Arbor campus.
The two Democrats want to increase funding to the university’s satellite campuses in Flint and Dearborn — the latter of which Makled graduated from — and expand Michigan Medicine’s services into rural areas with limited access to healthcare.
One of the most controversial aspects of the university’s statewide presence is its plans to build a data center in Ypsilanti Township with Los Alamos National Laboratory. The project is opposed by locals worried about its effect on their community and planned role in nuclear weapons research. The issue has followed the candidates throughout their campaigns.
Brown initially voted to approve the purchase of land for the data center’s planned site near Ypsilanti, along with the rest of the board. He has since changed course, calling the project “an example of environmental racism.” Makled has consistently called for U of M to heed local opposition, saying that he thinks “folks in Ypsilanti Township have been very clear.”
The two Republicans do not share a message on U of M’s data center plans. Epstein does not oppose the project, describing herself as “a free market capitalist” that “would love to grow the relationship between the university and the business community.” Schostak, himself a public official in a different township, sympathizes more with the locals, describing U of M’s conduct as “just atrocious.”
The candidates were unanimous on some issues; all thought free speech on campus needed protecting, and all agreed on a need for greater transparency within U of M’s administration, though they proposed slightly different solutions to get there. Epstein proposed making more of the university’s financial documents publicly available. Makled proposed making public comments more accessible at the regents’ monthly meetings. Schostak promised to hold office hours for interested constituents, and Brown bragged of handing out his personal cell phone to anyone who asked.
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