Amir Makled wants a seat on the University of Michigan Board of Regents. Before Democratic delegates vote on whether to endorse him at the party’s upcoming April convention, they may want to scroll through what he was posting on social media last year.

Makled is an attorney who made his name defending pro-Palestinian students at U-M, students who faced disciplinary charges after joining anti-genocide and divestment demonstrations in 2024. He’s running as a progressive Democrat, pitching himself on free expression, affordability, and accountability. Good platform. The problem is his own social media record.

According to archived posts obtained by Michigan Advance using the Internet Archive, Makled reposted content from Marjorie Taylor Greene and Candace Owens. The posts are gone now, deleted. But the archives aren’t.

What He Shared

The Greene reposts were relatively low-voltage. She was arguing that backing Israel conflicted with President Donald Trump’s America First doctrine. Pointed, but not in the same category as what Owens put out.

Owens is a different story. Some of the Owens posts Makled amplified described Israelis, the vast majority of whom are Jewish, as “demons” who “lie, cheat, murder and blackmail.” That language doesn’t come from a policy dispute. It pulls directly from centuries of antisemitic stereotype. Makled reposted it anyway, specifically when Owens was criticizing Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

Michigan Advance reached out to Makled for comment. He agreed to an interview Thursday, rescheduled it to Friday morning, then never followed through. Not a good look for someone running on accountability.

The Bigger Context

None of this exists in a vacuum. The war in Gaza started October 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters attacked southern Israel, killing approximately 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking more than 200 hostages. What followed, Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, has since been labeled a genocide by both Amnesty International and a United Nations independent commission. The U.S. has not deployed ground troops in Gaza, but has attacked Iran, which has funded and supported Hamas, and is now engaged in a joint military effort with Israel against that government.

So the political backdrop here is genuinely complicated. People can hold strong views about Palestinian rights, about proportionality, about what accountability looks like for a nuclear-armed regional power. That’s a legitimate conversation.

What’s not legitimate is laundering explicitly antisemitic content through your social media feed and calling it solidarity. There’s a real difference between criticizing Israeli government policy and platforming voices that describe Jewish people as demonic liars and murderers. Makled, apparently, didn’t draw that line.

What’s at Stake for U-M

The University of Michigan Board of Regents is an eight-member elected body that sets university policy, approves the budget, and hires the president. It’s one of the most consequential elected positions in Michigan that most voters couldn’t name. Regents serve eight-year terms. Whoever sits on that board shapes how one of the country’s largest public universities handles everything from tuition increases to campus speech policy to investments.

U-M has spent the last two years navigating intense internal conflict over its response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Faculty, students, and community members have fought over disciplinary proceedings, encampments, and what free expression actually means on a public campus. Makled built his profile directly inside that fight, representing students who faced university sanctions.

That history makes his candidacy meaningful to a lot of people. It also makes his judgment calls on social media harder to explain away.

What Delegates Are Weighing

Democratic delegates will decide Makled’s fate at the April endorsement convention. The party has its own complicated math here. Arab American voters and progressive activists make up a real part of the Democratic coalition in southeast Michigan, and Makled has support in those communities. But Jewish Democratic voters and civil rights advocates are also part of that coalition, and they’re not going to look past posts that describe Jewish people in dehumanizing terms, regardless of the geopolitical framing around them.

Makled has not publicly addressed the deleted posts, at least not on record. He had a chance to do that with a reporter and didn’t take it. That reporting from Michigan Advance lays out what the archives show.

The convention is coming. Delegates will have to decide what they make of all this before they vote.