Amid the flurry of executive orders President Donald Trump signed on his first day of office, one New York University parent saw an opportunity.
Citing an anti-immigration order that included language targeting those who “provide aid, advocacy, or support for foreign terrorists,” Elizabeth Rand posted a call to action on January 21.
“We now have a signed executive order authorizing the deportation of foreign students who support Hamas,” Rand wrote in a post to a Facebook group called Mothers Against College Antisemitism, which she founded soon after the October 7 attacks. She shared a link to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement tip line and urged members to use it to file complaints against university students and faculty. “Please tell everyone you know who is at a university to file complaints about foreign students and faculty who support Hamas.”
It’s the latest effort by Rand and the group to push for crackdowns against college students — a campaign that, by her account, has been hugely influential, especially at NYU.
“Please tell everyone you know who is at a university to file complaints about foreign students and faculty who support Hamas.”
Rand launched the Facebook group, also known as MACA, after coming across news of campus protests at the colleges where her son was applying, she told the Times of Israel. Originally intended to be a place where college parents could “do something as a group other than just complaining about it on Facebook,” the group has grown to more than 62,000 members who regularly discuss campus protests and how to file complaints against individual students or faculty at universities.
Screenshots shared with The Intercept show Rand boasting of her group’s sway on NYU and its president, Linda Mills. Rand and MACA members have taken credit for convincing the school to crack down more aggressively on students protesting Israel’s war on Gaza and getting an NYU graduate student teacher suspended. Rand has also posted about convincing the school to drop a student conduct meeting involving her son. She has shared images of emails of her direct correspondence with Mills, who apologized for the inquiry into her son’s conduct and praised him for getting straight As.
Rand did not respond to a request for comment. It’s unknown if anyone has actually reported NYU students or faculty to ICE per Rand’s suggestions. Rand removed some of the posts after The Intercept reached out for comment.
NYU said federal law prohibits discussing individual student records. The school did not respond to questions about the notion that Rand has any undue influence on its decision-making.
But some faculty are alarmed by what they see as special treatment going to a parent with access to the school’s top leaders.
“There is a different standard applied in the way that students are being punished.”
In response to The Intercept’s reporting, the NYU chapter of the American Association of University Professors called for an immediate independent review of communications between Mills and Rand for possible violations of university policy and federal law under Title VI, which bars organizations that receive federal funding from discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin.
“In addition to being hypocritical and grotesque, it appears to be evidence of actual discrimination at the administrative level at NYU,” said Zachary Samalin, an associate professor of English at NYU. “It shows that there is a different standard applied in the way that students are being punished.”
Photo: Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu via Getty Images
Earlier this month, NYU suspended 13 students who participated in a December protest at the campus library, where demonstrators staged a sit-in and called on the school to cut its financial ties to Israel. Students were notified of the suspensions on January 7 and given five days to appeal.
In a post to the group last week, Rand played up her role in the suspensions. “I’ll take some credit for this one,” she wrote, and shared an article about the suspensions published on January 23.
“I just sent you $13,000 the other day. As a parent and a consumer I’m outraged.”
Rand, an attorney in New York City, had been in contact with NYU President Linda Mills about the library protest, the screenshots show. In an email to Mills, the text of which Rand shared to her Facebook group, Rand said protesters had violated the school’s code of conduct by blocking building access and were intimidating students. “I just sent you $13,000 the other day. As a parent and a consumer I’m outraged,” she wrote to Mills.
Members of Rand’s group had attended counter-protests near the school’s campus and would return if the school did not intervene, she warned. “If this isn’t stopped, I’ll be happy to send them back,” Rand wrote.
A staffer in Mills’s office assured Rand that NYU was handling the protests. “I am writing to let you know that we have cleared the disruption and that arrests were made,” wrote Ariel Ennis, a staffer who works under the president. “Best of luck to your son during his final exams and never hesitate to reach out in the future.”
NYU spokesperson John Beckman said the school could not comment on individual student disciplinary records but handles disciplinary proceedings based upon fact-finding efforts. Beckman did not respond to questions about whether Rand has influenced decision-making by NYU leaders.
Members of the MACA group also took credit after NYU claimed they would suspend a graduate student teacher who they claimed canceled a class during library protests last month and encouraged students to participate. In a post to the Facebook group on January 7, Rand notified members that she had a call with NYU about the teacher. The group had previously sent an email to NYU professors complaining about the teacher canceling class during the protest, which was what “sparked the call,” Rand wrote.
Rand said NYU told her the teacher would be suspended following an investigation. “They are also aware that one of our members filed a complaint against them which is a good thing,” she wrote, adding that the NYU official “knew I had the attention of so many active members and wanted to fill me in” about other steps the school would announce in the near future.
One member of the Facebook group credited Rand for her work. “Simply awesome. And everyone one of us in this group knows that if you hadn’t put all this together, the prof would not have been suspended and NYU would not even be discussing any consequences. Nice work!!”
Rand has been vocal about NYU policy specifically when it pertains to her son.
Screenshots show Rand discussing a successful effort to convince the school to get her son a new roommate; other MACA members asked her to put in a word for their kids who were having roommate problems as well. “I did a deep dive into the person, saw they were fundraising for Gaza and got my kid switched out immediately,” Rand wrote.
Rand said she’d since gotten two emails from Mills and another NYU staffer asking her to let them know if her son had any issues or wanted anything. In another post, Rand shared an emoji laughing and crying and wrote, “And just like that,” her son “got his own room.”
Beckman, the NYU spokesperson, said requests to change roommates are common, with more than 120 such changes happening prior to check-in this semester.
NYU notified Rand’s son in an email earlier this month that he had been called into a disciplinary conduct meeting in relation to the library protests, according to screenshots of the email posted to the Facebook group by Rand and shared with The Intercept. Rand’s posts suggest her son was filmed walking near the protest. NYU would not comment on individual student disciplinary proceedings.
After Rand emailed Mills to ask that the school apologize and drop the meeting, it did.
Rand said her son would not participate in Gaza protests and reminded Mills that she could leverage her Facebook group to bring negative media attention to the school. “He has zero interest in protesting Gaza and zero sympathy for the obnoxious, loud, disillusioned, miserable individuals disturbing people who are there to get an education,” Rand wrote. “I’m completely outraged. Do you find this ironic? The 62,000 members of MACA do and they plan on giving this story media coverage to expose it for the farce that it is.”
The president apologized in an email to Rand. “We are looking into it as we speak and rest assured that we understand that [Rand’s son] was not part of the protest,” Mills wrote on January 13.
Shortly afterward, Mills emailed again to say the meeting had been canceled. “This request for a conversation has been dropped — again, I’m so sorry this happened. Please know that the team has taken this entire investigation very seriously,” Mills wrote. She concluded the note writing that Rand’s son “will receive confirmation that this has been dropped tomorrow. — L.”
“This is the power of MACA. Not the power of me, the power of us,” Rand wrote in a celebratory post sharing screenshots of her emails with Mills about her son.
After Rand shared the exchange on the Facebook group, one member asked Rand for an update on the disciplinary meeting. “I told them that 62,000 people knew about this and they were about to get media coverage,” Rand replied. “A half hour later they emailed, apologized and he got something apologizing and removing it from his record.”
“NYU’s administration has very clearly bypassed and thus undermined norms of academic freedom, faculty governance, and due process.”
Rand’s messages with Mills illustrate a fundamental problem at the highest levels of NYU leadership, said Rebecca E. Karl, immediate past president of AAUP-NYU and current member-at-large.
“NYU’s administration has very clearly bypassed and thus undermined norms of academic freedom, faculty governance, and due process,” Karl, a history professor at NYU, said. “Mills’ interventions demonstrate a serious lack of judgement and a clear bias.”
Photo: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images
While Rand portrays herself as fighting antisemitism on campus, her online content is at times Islamophobic, the NYU professors who spoke with The Intercept said. “It’s truly offensive stuff,” Samalin said.
Rand has shared Instagram videos of herself confronting protesters and discussing Islamophobia. “What is Islamophobia?” Rand asked in one video posted to Instagram in September. “Is that the fear of planes flying into buildings? Is that the fear of being killed at a music festival? Is that the fear of violence and terror? Because if that’s what Islamophobia is, I have it.”
Rand removed the post after The Intercept reached out for comment.
In a podcast episode last year, Rand suggested that there was a problem with the number of women wearing hijabs in New York City. Rand said she was “baffled” and scared. “I noticed that in New York, suddenly, there is this humongous amount of women in hijabs,” she said. “I feel constantly on edge. And I didn’t used to feel that way at all,” she said. “I didn’t really feel any anti-Muslim bias or anything. But lately I feel, I guess like, frightened. Not hatred or anything, just scared.”
Beckman, the NYU spokesperson, said, “We do not monitor nor do we comment on the social media postings of the parents of the University’s 50,000+ students, though, naturally we hope that everyone connected to the University, even in the broadest sense, will embrace the University’s traditions of peaceful, respectful, reasoned dialogue.”
When news broke Wednesday of Trump’s plan to sign a more targeted executive order, Rand shared an article about the order to the MACA group. Members applauded the news: “YES!!!!!!!!” one person wrote. Another commented “Wow!” and a third person posted a personalized emoji of herself celebrating with the words “Woohoo!”
The order, which Trump signed Wednesday, sets forth a policy “to combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment violence.”
The order directs the heads of executive departments or agencies to submit a report to the president within 60 days to identify “all civil and criminal authorities or actions” within their jurisdiction “that might be used to curb or combat anti-Semitism” on college campuses. It directs the attorney general to combat antisemitism using its relevant civil rights enforcement authorities, providing as an example the law prohibiting conspiracy against rights, under which violators are set to receive a fine or prison time.
The order also directs the secretaries of state, education, and homeland security to work together to recommend that universities familiarize themselves with federal immigration law proscribing visas or entry into the U.S. so they can “monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff.” The agencies are also tasked with recommending ways to best ensure that their reports lead, under applicable law, “to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens.”
When comparing NYU’s interactions with Rand to its reaction to students demonstrating against the war on Gaza, Samalin and Karl see a case of preferential treatment. NYU has disciplined and suspended pro-Palestine students, and issued “persona non grata” status to three faculty members last month, barring their access to campus buildings. Samalin also said its administrators have resisted meeting with members of its academic community who have been demanding NYU’s divestment from Israel since 2023, though the school entered into negotiations with protesters in April. At the same time, Mills has been personally corresponding with a parent over matters of discipline.
“This question of access to her is itself bound up with questions about punishment and discrimination on campus,” Samalin said.
“There’s very little confidence in the disciplinary process at our school,” Samalin said. “And this could be the final straw because it’s just so obvious that there’s this double standard that applies.”
