While several prominent university presidents famously refused to say that advocating for the genocide of Jews violates school policy when pressed by Congress two months after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, Kent Syverud, the president and chancellor of Syracuse University, wrote a campus-wide email explaining that such rhetoric would not be tolerated on campus. 

On Monday, Syverud was tapped as the University of Michigan’s 16th president following a six-month search to replace President Santa Ono. Syverud’s appointment was met with optimism from several Jewish leaders who said his strong ties to the Jewish community could benefit the Ann Arbor school, which experienced some of the most disruptive anti-Israel and antisemitic activity in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza. 

“Syverud’s appointment is very good news for the University of Michigan, which has faced numerous incidents of antisemitism and anti-Israel hostility in recent years,” Miriam Elman, who was a tenured associate professor at Syracuse before joining the Academic Engagement Network as its executive director in 2019, told Jewish Insider. University of Michigan’s undergraduate student body is 15% Jewish, according to Hillel International. 

At Syracuse, Syverud supported the school’s large Jewish community, including engaging collaboratively with the campus Hillel and Chabad chapters, according to Elman. Syverud also met regularly with the leadership of the Jewish Federation of Central New York. 

Last May, at the federation’s invitation, he provided introductory remarks for a community-wide screening of the documentary “October 8,” a film about the world’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks. “He provided an update on the campus response to antisemitism for the hundreds of attendees and made it clear that it will never be tolerated,” said Elman.

“He is committed to the principles of the academy, including unfettered free expression and academic freedom, as well as to community safety,” continued Elman. “While other university leaders equivocated and failed, since Oct. 7, the [Syracuse] administration, under his leadership, has consistently enforced the student code of conduct and reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on protests and demonstrations.

University of Michigan’s Board of Regents voted unanimously to appoint Syverud, an accomplished legal scholar, during a special session on Monday. Syverud is returning to his Ann Arbor roots; he served as the law school’s associate dean for academic affairs from 1995 to 1997. He then served as law school dean of Vanderbilt University from 1997 to 2005 and later as the dean of the law school at Washington University in St. Louis from 2005 to 2013 before coming to Syracuse. 

University of Michigan Regent Jordan Acker, who was the target of anti-Israel vandals at his home and law office near campus several times in 2024, told JI he is “proud that Kent Syverud is returning to his alma mater as president.”

“His time at Syracuse, [and] his leadership at Washington University and Vanderbilt show a deep commitment to students, their welfare, and creating an environment for all to learn. I have no doubt he will continue that legacy as Michigan’s new president,” said Acker. 

Elman noted Syverud’s “steadfast rejection of BDS and the academic boycott of Israel and support for numerous educational opportunities for students and faculty to engage with Israeli universities and scholars.” 

“Syverud also understands the threats facing the Jewish people and the campus, recently noting that nefarious external actors, including Iran, seek to manipulate students, stoke divisions and cause mayhem,” continued Elman.

Alums for Campus Fairness praised Syverud and said the organization “looks forward to continuing our strong working relationship” with the incoming chancellor, who in October participated in a panel on campus antisemitism hosted by the group.

Syverud also participated in a 2024 summit on campus antisemitism for university presidents hosted by the American Jewish Committee, Hillel International and the American Council on Education. 

“AJC is heartened over the news that Kent Syverud will take on the presidency at the University of Michigan,” Sara Coodin, AJC’s director of academic affairs, told JI.” “Syverud brings a wealth of experience and measured, thoughtful and heartfelt engagement and commitment to fostering a positive campus culture and countering hate.”

In 2019, Syverud was recognized by the Simon Wiesenthal Center for suspending Syracuse fraternities that posted videos with antisemitic and racist statements. 

The search for Michigan’s next president began last summer after Ono stepped down following a tenure marked by post-Oct. 7 turbulence — including a nearly month-long encampment — until his resignation last spring. 

Ono, now inaugural director of the Ellison Institute of Technology, was generally seen as an ally of Michigan’s pro-Israel community who was quick to condemn acts of antisemitism — leading to pro-Palestinian vandals attacking his home on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.  

Domenico Grasso, the former chancellor of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, currently serves as the university’s interim president. Syverud is expected to assume the position by July 1. 

Gordon Gee has served as president of more American universities than almost anyone, as far as he knows. Most recently he led West Virginia University, from which he retired in July; before that, he oversaw Ohio State, Vanderbilt, Brown and the University of Colorado over a span of 45 years. 

Alongside his various presidencies, Gee also helped open Hillel houses on two different campuses: Vanderbilt and Ohio State. It’s a distinction that makes him particularly well-suited to opine on the state of American higher education, which has been grappling with the thorny and sometimes intertwined issues of antisemitism, free speech and student conduct. 

A 2002 Wall Street Journal article attributed Vanderbilt’s decision to increase recruitment of Jewish students to Gee, himself a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. More than two decades later, under a successor Gee proudly claims, Vanderbilt is still courting Jewish students and positioning itself as a bastion of common sense amid the upheaval that followed the Oct. 7 attacks two years ago.   

As Gee, 81, looks back on his career and reflects on the state of academia, he sees a growing chasm between what he described as two different kinds of universities: those like Vanderbilt, that have held firm to the principles of institutional neutrality, and those like his alma mater, Columbia University, that have struggled to take an impartial stance in response to campus protests and antisemitism — and that are wary of making significant change. 

“One is the resistance. [They say] anything that comes out of the [Trump] administration, anything that they want, anything, it is just terrible,” Gee told Jewish Insider in an interview last week ahead of a keynote address at the annual conference of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa. “The other are those institutions that are trying to determine a way to move forward and do so by knitting themselves together in different ways. Those are mainly the big public universities. Those are the real future of the American higher education system, and for Jewish students themselves.”

Immediately after Oct. 7, Gee called Rabbi Ari Berman, the president of Yeshiva University, and asked for help in recruiting other university presidents to sign onto a statement condemning the attacks, which was published in The Wall Street Journal as a full-page ad. But they were unable to get many of the big-name academic leaders they wanted. 

“The biggest challenge facing university presidents is fear,” said Gee. “I think the university presidents, in many ways, are paralyzed, and a lot of it is brought on by themselves, because of the fact that they allowed themselves to become kind of engaged in this ‘go along, get along’ response, and now all of a sudden, when they discover that they’ve got to take a stand, it’s becoming very difficult for many of them.”

“That was when I really started to discover that there’s no moral high ground on this with a number of people. It was very distressing to me,” Gee said. “I think that so many people were walking on eggshells. They didn’t want to have disruptions. They also didn’t want to speak out.”

Although anti-Israel protests took place at West Virginia University, there was no encampment there in the spring of 2024, as happened on dozens of campuses around the country that semester. As Gee watched other university administrators fail to respond in clear ways to the protests that often crossed a line into harassment and targeting of Jewish students, he saw administrators afraid of upsetting stakeholders on campus. 

“The biggest challenge facing university presidents is fear,” said Gee. “I think the university presidents, in many ways, are paralyzed, and a lot of it is brought on by themselves, because of the fact that they allowed themselves to become kind of engaged in this ‘go along, get along’ response, and now all of a sudden, when they discover that they’ve got to take a stand, it’s becoming very difficult for many of them.”

Rather than protecting the free speech of pro-Israel students who were often cowed into silence by classmates, university leaders did little, Gee alleged. 

“They were silencing those who were intimidated by it, those who were pro-Israel, those who wanted to speak up in terms of balance,” said Gee. “University administrators were allowing that to happen.”

As President Donald Trump has sought to make his mark on higher education by targeting campus antisemitism and going after university diversity programs, Gee does not share the same skepticism toward Trump’s proposals that has characterized the responses of many university administrators who worry the administration’s actions are too heavy-handed.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has approached several top universities about signing onto a compact that would give them preferential access to federal funds. No university has yet signed on, with administrators claiming it amounts to government infringement on their academic freedom. Gee — generally a skeptic of federal meddling in higher education — isn’t entirely opposed.

“If the Obama administration were doing exactly the same thing, people would cheerfully say, ‘Oh, that’s right, and that’s what we’re going to do,’” said Gee. “A lot of it has to do with the people in power, and I can understand that to some extent, but it doesn’t mean to say that the ideas are bad.” 

“Three-quarters of it is exactly what universities ought to be doing. A quarter of it probably is a bridge too far,” Gee explained. “But the very fact that a political administration, this Republican administration, can take on universities, and successfully so in many ways, has shown how the relationship between universities and the general public has deteriorated.” 

While Trump’s approach may have come from a genuine concern about the academic environment, “they’ve used that not as a scalpel, but as a sledgehammer,” said Gee. Still, he thinks the vehement opposition in many corners of academia has to do with the messenger.

“If the Obama administration were doing exactly the same thing, people would cheerfully say, ‘Oh, that’s right, and that’s what we’re going to do,’” said Gee. “A lot of it has to do with the people in power, and I can understand that to some extent, but it doesn’t mean to say that the ideas are bad.” 

Gee described himself as “always the optimist,” and said the current uncertainty facing academia — budget cuts, public distrust, a lack of understanding of its purpose — can be a “clarifying moment.”

“We need to understand we’re about teaching and learning. We’re not about propaganda. We’re not about ostracism. We’re not about making people feel inadequate if they don’t toe the line,” said Gee.