Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Attack on Michigan Student Not ‘Hate’ Crime: Police

Michigan police are reportedly refusing to treat as a hate crime an attack in which a Jewish student was set upon by skinhead thugs, spewing hate and stapling his mouth shut.

Capt. Jeff Murphy of the East Lansing police told the State News, Michigan State University’s student newspaper, that witnesses did not hear Nazi or anti-Semitic slogans during the weekend attack on Zach Tennen.

“We just need a lot more to it before it comes to the level of a hate crime,” Murphy told the State News. “If this rises to the level of a hate crime as this goes on, rest assured, we will get the person charged.”

Zach Tennen, the 19-year-old Michigan State student who was attacked early Sunday, said two men “raised their arms in a Nazi salute,” and “chanted ‘’Heil Hitler’ “ before attacking him at a party, according to a report in the Detroit Free Press.

“It almost seemed like they tried to kill me, and to think about that in my brain, physically – it isn’t very pleasant,” Tennen told the Free Press.

Tennen did not receive any assistance after the beating, in which he was knocked unconscious. He had to hail a taxi to Sparrow Hospital in Lansing. On Monday, Tennen had his jaw wired shut at St. Joseph Mercy Oakland hospital in Pontiac.

Michigan State has said they will provide academic support for Tennen. The two suspects remain at-large.

Tennen, an avid basketball fan, is the grandson of longtime Michigan 3rd District Judge Harvey F. Tennen. He has been tweeting updates on his recuperation @ZJTBasketball11.

Police were questioning an 18-year-old man from Farmington Hills, but no arrest has been made, the Detroit News reported

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.