More than a Hedge Fund: How the University of Michigan Directly Supports Zionism and Imperialism

by Black Ink

[Editor’s note: this piece was submitted by Some Folks in Washtenaw County]

American universities are colonial institutions. They are built on stolen land and support colonial projects abroad. They collaborate with weapons developers and train their workforce. They produce the next generation of leaders of US empire who will craft the ideological justifications for land theft and exploitation. Locally, universities are gentrifying forces, displacing and “ethnically cleansing” the surrounding working-class communities through heavy reliance on policing.

The University of Michigan does all these things. And as a state institution committed to American imperialism, UMich also supports the zionist project.

The Tahrir coalition of student activists recently showed how UMich’s $17.9 billion endowment is invested in weapons developers that service Israel. It called on the university to divest from companies “profiting from the human rights violations committed by Israel and/or aiding in the apartheid system maintained against Palestinians.” Tahrir’s endowment analysis demonstrated how the university functions as a hedge fund that materially supports the war machine, and it’s important to understand this role.

But the focus on the endowment within student movements can be misleading. It creates the illusion that the university could be cleared from complicity if only it reshuffled its investment portfolio, without transforming what takes place on campus. It plays into the framing of universities as “progressive” institutions, meant to do good, but tarnished by some ties to bad actors.

The push for divestment also leads to the smoke and mirrors of the “negotiating table.” At campuses across the country, students organizing for divestment have sold out many people for a seat at that table. At Brown University, undergraduate students caved to the administration’s demand to make the encampment exclusive to university affiliates, maintaining the divide between students and “outside agitators.” They later agreed to disband the encampment in exchange for talks with the administration; earlier this month, the Brown Corporation rejected even the modest proposal to divest from just ten companies. Encampments at Rutgers, Harvard, and other universities were disbanded with similar trickery. Meanwhile, fake divestment “wins” have been circulating because some student activists want quick victories.

Centering the endowment impacts the shape of organizing. It directs energies towards the administration. We can get trapped in their labyrinths of finance capitalism. We can become beholden to them for information, dependent on them for action. And the analyses of the university that focus on the endowment can miss the forest for the trees.

The work of supporting zionism and US imperialism is happening all around us, in classrooms and laboratories, all the time. It is not abstract. It isn’t hidden. It does not require any FOIA requests to see. This work depends on services that universities (but not hedge funds) are basically uniquely capable of providing.

The research wing of the University of Michigan directly supports the US military-industrial complex. In recent years, UMich received over $50 million from the Pentagon, including over $2 million just for “defense aircraft” work. One $5.6 million contract for “tank/automotive defense” work began in 2003 and is expected to end in 2030. Pretty much all the major weapons companies the university works with have ties to Israel, and sometimes UMich works directly with Israeli entities.

The uniformed soldiers of US empire are trained on campus where they are honored and given special privileges. UMich’s ROTC program is responsible for the Wolverine Battalion. One undergraduate reflected on his “many unforgettable experiences” there, being trained for the US Air Force, like getting to meet “security forces and military working dogs, see explosive ordinance robots while wearing a bomb suit, and use full scale flight and weapons simulators.” There are courses on “military science” and “preparation for active duty,” such as AERO 410, offered this fall, which teaches “the fundamental values and socialization processes associated with the Armed Services” and “the requisites for maintaining adequate national security forces.”

All this takes place regardless of how the endowment is invested, or whether the investments are direct or indirect. If at some point in the future the university decided to redirect investments from part of the weapons industry to another nefarious industry because it gives better “return on investment” – as the investors of the University of California’s endowment decided to do with segments of the fossil fuels industry in 2019 – would this make a real difference? It wouldn’t change the fact that the university functions as a hedge fund. Would it meaningfully transform what takes place on campus?

The Tahrir coalition discovered that UMich “invested in Lockheed Martin and Boeing in 2016 and Lockheed Martin in 2018, but we have no record of the University being invested in them in 2020, 2021, or 2023.” Their report states: “We need to know if the University still invests in Boeing and Lockheed Martin or if they have moved away from these companies entirely after 2016 and 2018.” UMich works directly with both companies (as described below), so it clearly didn’t “move away” from them in any sense. This is an example where focusing so much on the endowment obscures the most direct ties.

Many parts of the University of Michigan contribute to the US war machine. Some are listed below.

Back in June, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at CUNY announced: “We are no longer asking anything of CUNY. Instead we ask our communities to make CUNY’s ties to the zionist occupation untenable.” What if we did the same?

1. University of Michigan Automotive Research Center (ARC)

2350 Hayward Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2133
Tel: (734) 764-2694

• A research center sponsored by US army and jointly run with universities, notably the University of Michigan. ARC describes itself as “a University-based U.S. Army Center of Excellence for modeling and simulation of military and civilian ground systems.”
• In 2024, the US army gave ARC an additional $100 million to develop “autonomous vehicle technologies.”
• The center has people from U.S. Army Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC), located in Michigan, that works on vehicles for US military. GVSC says how important the US-Israeli partnership is to the US military. GVSC states that this partnership was crucial “in expediting the transfer of Israeli Active Protection Systems (APS) technology to be installed onto US Army combat platforms for rapid assessment and quantification of the increase in US combat systems’ combat effectiveness.”
• Many UMich faculty are involved. ARC’s director is Bogdan Epureanu, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and EECS at UMich. Other faculty include Kira Barton, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UMich, who works on military research projects such as creating “robot reconnaissance in an unknown environment.” The leadership of ARC includes people from Lockheed Martin.
• The ARC held its 2024 “Annual Review” at the Michigan Union on campus.

2. Economic Growth Institute at University of Michigan

506 E Liberty Street, 3rd Floor
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Phone: (734) 998-6201
Fax: (734) 998-6202

• Runs the Michigan Defense Resiliency Consortium (MDRC) which helps weapons developers find workers and optimize their production pipelines, especially in times of crisis. Its motto is “Supercharge your business and power the DoD’s needs.” The MDRC plans to “leverage Michigan assets,” saying it “will collaborate with businesses, universities, and the military to locate advanced battery and energy storage assets in Michigan. The goal is to help the Department of Defense address energy storage and battery technology challenges by identifying potential solutions and working on standardization, analytics, and infrastructure improvements.”
• Economic Growth Institute worked on the Defense Manufacturing Assistance Program which “worked directly with defense companies to identify ways to strengthen and diversify their business to ensure the long-term vitality of the defense supply chain.”
• In 2016, the Institute received $8 million from the Department of Defense to help weapons companies deal with the fact that “Michigan, Ohio and Indiana have lost more than 6,800 defense supply-chain positions in recent years.”

3. Tauber Institute For Global Operations

700 E. University Avenue
Kresge Hall, 3rd Floor West
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1234

• Where students and faculty have worked for years for weapons developers such as Boeing (which sponsors Tauber) and also for drug profiteers such as Pfizer.
• Boeing is a key part of the US military-industrial complex. Tauber Institute has worked for years on projects for Boeing. One included providing “stronger integration and streamlined production of the KC-46 aircraft for the US Air Force, which is manufactured in Boeing’s facility in Evrett, WA. Read more about Tauber’s services to Boeing (in 2021).
• The faculty advisors for Tauber’s Boeing projects have included:

1. 1. Luis Garcia-Guzman, College of Engineering
   2. David Kaufman, Ross School of Business
   3. Richard Hughes, College of Engineering
   4. M. S. Krishnan, Ross School of Business

• Pfizer profits from denying people access to drugs, especially in Global South, and it signed a deal with Israel at height of pandemic to give its Covid vaccine to Israeli Jewish population.
• Tauber has also done work for Amazon, which services the Israeli state, as well as the Pentagon and US police departments, while abusing its own workers and suppressing labor organizing. Tauber worked to help Amazon be “operationally prepared to deploy an electric fleet at scale” for deliveries.

4. Stephen M. Ross School of Business

701 Tappan Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1234

• Works for weapons developers such as Boeing. Ross faculty and students “build a new near-core product or service business for Boeing.” Ross works with Tauber Institute. Ross MBAs often go work for companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
• Ross is also the symbol of the capitalist university, which pretends to be “public” but creates private wealth, grabs land, and does the bidding of US empire.

5. Department of Aerospace Engineering

François-Xavier Bagnoud Aerospace Building
1320 Beal Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2140
Phone: (734) 764-3310
Fax: (734) 763-0578

• This is where some of the work for weapons developers such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin takes place.
• The department is proud of its services to companies like Lockheed Martin. It boasts that UMich graduates “break new ground in the field of aerospace and aeronautics and go on to join the largest aerospace engineering alumni base in the United States, including Kelly Johnson, the famous Lockheed Skunk Works designer behind innovative aircraft such as the SR-71.” The department’s advisory board includes Steven Shepard, a senior program manager at Lockheed Martin, among other Lockheed affiliates.
• The department has a $20 million partnership with the Israeli Technion Institute, which develops weapons for the zionist entity.
• They try to launder the reputation of Lockheed with events like this one about how Lockheed Martin is all about reducing “personal prejudices” in the workplace.
• In October 2024, UMich announced it will receive $35 million to develop electric propulsion for the air force. Weapons developers Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are on the board of this initiative. The university’s participation is directed by Benjamin Jorns, a professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, who said “we are very grateful to the U.S. Space Force and Air Force Research Laboratory for this opportunity.”

6. Dept of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (North Campus)

1301 Beal Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48109

• Received funding from Lockheed Martin
• Hosts events sponsored by weapons developer General Dynamics
• Honors alumni that go work for weapons developers like Raytheon

7. College of Engineering

Climate & Space Research Building
University of Michigan
2455 Hayward Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109

• Collaborates with the Michigan eTrek program to Israel. Takes engineers to learn from the zionist colony, which is described as “a nation that boasts the highest density of scientists and tech professionals in the world.” It repeats the zionist propaganda about making the desert bloom: “students get a chance to explore water technologies that help the desert bloom.”

8. ROTC

930 North University Avenue
Room 1090
Chemistry Building
Ann Arbor, MI 48109

• Training for the soldiers of US empire.