APRIL 14, 2026 — The Graduate Employees’ Organization (AFT-MI 3550) today sent the below letter to Governor Whitmer, urging her to rescind her endorsement of UM regent candidate incumbent Jordan Acker. GEO stands by our endorsement of Amir Makled for UM regent.
Governor Whitmer, De-Endorse U-M Regent Jordan Acker
Dear Governor Whitmer,
We recently learned that you endorsed U-M Regent Jordan Acker in his re-election bid. As members of Graduate Employees’ Organization, AFT Local 3550 at the University of Michigan, representing more than 4,000 graduate instructors, researchers, and staff assistants across three campuses, we urge you to withdraw your endorsement for the following reasons:
1.) Regent Jordan Acker has failed to stand up to the Trump administration. When the Board of Regents preemptively cancelled the University’s celebrated Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity program, Regent Acker publicly called it “bureaucratic” and “ineffective,” echoing Republican Regent Sarah Hubbard’s talking points. Capitulating to the Trump Administration’s pressure, Regent Acker stood by as Michigan Medicine ended gender-affirming care for patients under the age of 19. And most prominently, Jordan Acker allied himself with the federal government’s assault on pro-Palestine students and workers. With Acker as the most vocal of the Board, the U-M Regents initiated a systematic campaign against pro-Palestine students and community members, hurting our community through police brutality, unilateral campus bans, employment blacklists, criminal and student disciplinary charges, and top-down policy changes that have eviscerated student rights, leading to three ACLU and Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice federal lawsuits against the University of Michigan. The Democratic Regents’ political ties with Attorney General Dana Nessel, and specifically Jordan Acker’s close personal friendship with the AG, resulted in the politically-motivated criminal charges brought by the AG’s office against pro-Palestine students, graduate workers, and community members. This was an unprecedented escalation by the Regents, as the AG’s office bypassed local prosecutor Eli Savit to ensure harsher punishments for those urging university divestment from companies profiting from the genocide in Gaza.
2.) Jordan Acker is antagonistic to labor unions whose positions he disagrees with and uses his public platform to denigrate students and workers. For instance, he called GEO’s 2023 demand for a living wage “unreasonable” and smeared graduate workers picketing as “threatening.” Former Graduate Employees’ Organization Vice President Ember McCoy recalls meeting with Jordan Acker during GEO’s 2022–2023 contract campaign: “Regent Acker and his allies claim he was instrumental to our contract campaign’s success in 2023, but in our meetings with him throughout bargaining, the conversation was often unproductive and distracted, and he spent more time talking about himself and his twitter than the working conditions of graduate students and our needs.” He took part in the Board of Regents filing an injunction—which the court subsequently denied—in an effort to break our strike for a living wage in 2023. Shamefully, Acker used footage from our strike—which he vocally opposed—in his campaign material to burnish his “pro-labor” credentials. And now that international workers are in the cross-hairs of the Trump administration and our colleagues have been taken by ICE, enabled by their firing from the University, where is Regent Acker? We are tired of being treated so poorly by such a “pro-labor” Regent.
3.) Jordan Acker, working with the Board of Regents, has undermined academic freedom and freedom of speech on campus. The Regents have spent millions of dollars on policing, private surveillance teams to harass pro-Palestine students, thousands of surveillance cameras, new 24/7 private security, and multi-million dollar contracts with higher ed consulting firms like InCompliance and Grand River Consulting to discipline pro-Palestine undergraduates and graduates. The Regents, with Acker in the lead, created a secret prosecutor’s office on campus to go after students whose speech they disagree with. This office has a 100% “conviction rate” – all students have been found guilty—which has resulted in alumni being barred from re-enrollment. Under the current U-M Regents and with Acker’s vocal support, surveillance and police violence on the University of Michigan campus has become normalized. This is not the campus environment we want for our students or ourselves.
The U-M Board of Regents have engaged in a top-down, authoritarian remaking of campus life that has systematically disempowered students and workers on campus. They have spent more time and effort bullying graduate workers and pro-Palestine supporters than they have fighting the Trump administration. The Regents have signed their names to that project and Regent Jordan Acker has doubled down and defended it again and again. For these reasons we voted to endorse Amir Makled for U-M Regent: we deserve a Regent who will champion workers’ demands, defend freedom of speech on campus, and actually listen to grad workers—not sue us, smear us, or scold us. We urge you, Governor Whitmer, to listen to graduate workers at the University of Michigan and de-endorse Jordan Acker.
Signed,
Graduate Employees’ Organization (AFT-MI 3550)
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