By Jenna Triplett in The College Fix
Rabbi criticizes the university for taking sides in a contentious political issue
A University of Michigan graduate student will study “commodification of land” in Palestine and Detroit with the help of an “anti-racism grant.”
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The university awarded architecture student, Abraham Alzoubi one of its 19 grants through its Anti-Racism Collaborative, according to a news release. He is a student at the Detroit campus.
The collaborative’s 19 grants will fund 18 research projects conducted by members of the graduate programs and will cost the university more than $94,000.
Alzoubi (pictured) said his parents are “Palestinian refugees,” according to the news release.
“It starts off being Palestinian, that my family was dispossessed of their land and displaced,” Alzoubi stated in the news release. “They moved to different Arab countries and they never really were able to find a permanent home … and that’s been my interest in architectural studies.
“That’s been my interest in architectural studies,” Alzoubi stated in the news release. “I was really interested in urban planning and I really started to dive into the research of urban renewal, redlining, and highways being constructed that destroyed black communities and immigrant communities.”
The College Fix contacted Alzoubi twice via email to ask how he plans to use the grant funds and what he hopes to accomplish through his research but has not received a response.
Alzoubi plans to conduct his research while on a tour of the West Bank.
The NCID plays a key role in the University of Michigan’s Anti-Racism Initiative which aims to promote “racial equity and justice in society.”
Mike Morland, the communications director for the university’s Office of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion, has not responded to requests for comment in the past week. The Fix sent an email on Tuesday and tried to follow up via phone, but the call dropped. Elizabeth Cole, who directs the National Center for Institutional Diversity, which administers the grants, had previously directed The Fix to Morland.
The Fix asked for comment on the grant, the amount awarded, and how it related to the university’s pledge to maintain institutional neutrality on hot button political issues.
The university’s Board of Regents voted to adopt institutional neutrality in October of this year.
“(To) avoid any suggestion that the University community must conform to a particular side of a contested issue, the University will maintain a position of institutional neutrality on political or social issues and events not directly related to its internal governance,” according to the regents’ bylaw.
A rabbi criticized the university’s funding of the research.
“Research should be done in an unbiased fashion, not by demonizing the victims or drawing moral equivalencies where there are none,” Yaakov Menken, an orthodox rabbi and founder of a Jewish advocacy group, told The Fix via email.
Rabbi Menken criticized the program, saying the perspective of the project appears to be “pro-racism.”
“Sadly, this grant could only be described as pro-racism,” the managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values told The Fix. “Alzoubi peddles false narratives about Israel-Palestine, claiming that Israel oppresses and dispossesses the Palestinians.”
This is one of many grants that have been awarded through the Anti-Racism Initiative to recipients with politically motivated research goals.
Just last month, the university awarded a grant for the study of “weaponized parking,” as previously reported by The Fix.
Other grants have gone to studying racism in dating apps, as The Fix has reported. It comes as the university’s massive DEI investments face internal and external scrutiny.
The New York Times, for example, ran a lengthy story recently that highlighted how hundreds of millions of dollars in DEI spending has not improved the campus climate.
Image by Ken Lund via Flickr, Creative Commons