A Jewish regent at the University of Michigan awoke to the sound of shattered glass early Monday morning and discovered his home and his wife’s car had been vandalized in an apparent antisemitic incident.
Just after 2 a.m. Monday, someone threw two mason jars through the front window of UM regent Jordan Acker’s house in Huntington Woods and spray-painted the family’s white SUV with “Divest and Free Palestine,” according to media reports. The anti-Israel message was accompanied by an upside-down red triangle, which has become a symbol of violent Palestinian resistance against Israel amid the nation’s war with Hamas.
By the time Acker rushed downstairs, the antisemitic vandals were already gone. Neighbors called the police after witnessing at least two people fleeing the house.
Reached for comment, the Huntington Woods Department of Public Safety referred National Review to its earlier media release.
“A neighbor’s security camera showed two suspects, both wearing dark colored hooded sweatshirts pulled over their head, walking southbound and then stopping in front of the victim’s home,” the release states in part. “After a short period of time both suspects can be observed running back northbound from the home.”
There were no injuries, the department said, and an investigation in coordination with local, state, and federal agencies is underway.
The attack marks the third time Acker, a husband and father of three daughters, has been targeted since Hamas’s October 7 massacre of Israeli citizens last year.
“We all need to call out this cowardly act attacking my family and my home for what it truly is — terrorism,” Acker wrote on Instagram. “And like we always do in this great nation when we’re confronted with terrorism — I will not let fear win. All this does is harden my resolve to continue to do the right thing for the University and the Michigan voters who elected me.”
“I call upon members of the Michigan community to publicly repudiate this vile anti-Semitic intimidation, and to offer full support to law enforcement to root out these bigots so they see the consequences for their actions.”
Acker’s law firm, Goodman Acker, was vandalized in June with the words “Free Palestine” and “Divest Now” graffitied on the office building. The incident at the law firm was deemed a hate crime. That investigation remains ongoing.
Then, in May, anti-Israel protesters held late-night demonstrations outside the homes of Acker and the seven other elected regents that govern UM. Acker said a masked protester taped a list of demands, which included defunding the police, on his front door.
UM described the latest incident as a “clear act of antisemitic intimidation.”
“The University of Michigan condemns these criminal acts in the strongest possible terms,” the school said in a statement. “They are abhorrent and, unfortunately, just the latest in a number of incidents where individuals have been harassed because of their work on behalf of the university. This is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”
“We call on our community to come together in solidarity and to firmly reject all forms of bigotry and violence.”
Like other elite academic institutions, UM has been roiled by antisemitic protests and vandalism this year. Anti-Israel protesters set up an encampment that police ultimately dismantled, and vandals spray-painted the homes of UM president Santa Ono and UM chief investment officer Erik Lundberg on the first anniversary of the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel.
The recent acts of vandalism occurred in spite of the public university’s condemnation of the violent acts, in which Ono declared “antisemitism has no place on campus and is antithetical to the core values of the University of Michigan.”