In the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attacks, Elizabeth Rand founded the Facebook group Mothers Against College Antisemitism. Less than a month later, MACA had over 42,000 members, reaching 60,000 within a year.

In response to calls to action, members — affectionately known as MACAbees — flooded campus administrators’ inboxes and voicemails with complaints, calling for professors to be fired, pro-Palestinian programming to be cancelled and Israel divestment resolutions to be rejected. Rand served as the face of the movement, appearing in major media outlets including The New York Times, pushing to crush encampments and deport foreign protesters.

At Rand’s behest, in December 2024, The MACA Foundation, Inc. was approved as a 501(c)(3), under which she acted as president of the board before stepping down in November. Today, she’s grappling with the board for control of what she considers to be her baby, and on Friday, she received a cease-and-desist letter, demanding that she halt any actions related to MACA.

The situation is synonymous with “if you give a child up for adoption because you think that the child will have a better life than you can give it, but you still want to have some visitation and you want to be able to still see that child,” Rand told eJewishPhilanthropy. “That is how I envisioned my leaving the board. However, that’s not what happened.”

Since its inception, the group, whose acronym resembles and politics are often in line with President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, has inflamed controversy, accused by critics of stifling free speech on campus through intimidation and by former members of banning people with what Rand and the group’s leaders seemed to be divergent views on Israel, Zionism and Palestinian rights.

But over the past three weeks, the MACA Facebook page has become entrenched with infighting between Rand and the board, with Rand controlling the narrative by deleting posts with opposing views and banning members, including the entire current board. 

Members of the Facebook group, supporters of MACA and campus officials described the internal feud to eJP as distressing and counterproductive.

Former MACA leaders told eJP that over the past year Rand has pushed out several iterations of organization’s board as well as Facebook group administrators, with what they describe as “bullying” towards anyone who disagrees with her vision for the nonprofit which, they said, she had hoped to merge with a larger organization, at one point aiming for Jewish National Fund, hoping to make $400,000 off the deal. (Rand disputes this description.) 

At the same time, Rand told eJP that some former board members have not acted in the group’s best interest and that the board needs to be reformatted with her holding veto power over any new members. She also wants an apology from the board for the actions of a past board member whom she felt had abused her.

It’s not uncommon for founders to find themselves outed at the organizations they dreamt up, Laura Solomon, founder and owner of Laura Solomon & Associates, a law firm devoted to the formation and representation of charities and philanthropic individuals, told eJP.

“Unfortunately, some charity founders do not get good legal advice and therefore, do not understand that the charities that have founded are not membership corporations,” she said. “In that case, they have no ownership over the assets or power over the organization once they leave — or are removed from — the board of directors.”

One former board member told eJP that MACA is a non-membership charity, unlike a family foundation or other nonprofit where certain people retain power. 

Additionally, without knowing the specifics of the situation, Solomon said, “Charities typically have a variety of assets — including physical property, funds and intellectual property. Social media accounts in the name of a charity are a form of charitable asset that must be used exclusively for the charitable purpose. The Board is tasked with safeguarding those assets, in keeping with their fiduciary duties.”

It was Rand’s idea to attain tax-exempt status last year. “I wanted to make it like a legitimate organization, not just a Facebook group,” she said. 

In Rand’s version of events, since MACA’s inception as a nonprofit, there have been two boards, she said, with the first board leaving because the time commitment was too much.

“I used to think [that] there’s some kind of bad luck thing [connected to being on the board] ‘cause a lot of [the board members] left for different medical reasons. Fortunately, they’re all OK, and most of those people are still on the page.” Still, “some of [the board members] were not the best eggs.”

Being on the board became too much for her, too, Rand said, so she quit in mid-November. “I have a full-time job [as a lawyer in Manhattan], and I really felt that, when I was board president, there were other people who could probably do a better job than I was doing because I work all day and not everybody else on the board did.”

A Dec. 18 post in the MACA Facebook group explored her reasoning deeper: “The Board [sic] that we have now does work hard. But I can tell you unequivocally that they did not want me on it. For 15 months I was cursed at and yelled at mostly by one person, and 99% of this was because they thought I banned too many people.”

Soon after resigning, Rand received a letter from the board that sent her reeling, she said. “We’re asking that you don’t discuss any of this publicly and that you turn over administrative rights to the page,” she recalled it saying. 

Rand refused. “That page will die with me,” she said to eJP last week. “I built that myself, and it is not going to become the property of anyone. The bylaws that were filed with the state of New York are silent on that issue for a good reason: because I’m the sole owner of it.”

Much of the dispute originated directly between Rand and the one board member referenced in her Dec. 18 post, who, over the past two weeks, Rand has named in several Facebook posts on her personal Facebook, where she has nearly 2,500 friends and almost 4,000 followers, and in the MACA group, but who has asked eJP not to be named in this piece because of fear of further harassment towards them and their family.

On Facebook, Rand posted screenshots of a message sent to her by the board member, who, in the screenshotted message, which she took down from the MACA group but remains up in her personal account, claimed that Rand has been acting illegally in undisclosed ways as a leader in the nonprofit. “You are on [sic] serious trouble,” the screenshots show the board member saying. The board has “a big Liz file,” the person wrote, filled with examples of Rand threatening and shaming others, as well as benefiting financially from the organization. “Your actions have been illegal at best, deranged at worst… Can this behavior cause a lawyer to lose their license; unclear but it will be good to find out.”

(The former board member refused to be interviewed for this piece, fearing reprisal by Rand and MACA followers. Current board members also refused interviews.)

Because of what Rand described as the “abuse” that she suffered from the board member, who has since resigned, Rand is “thinking of just taking the whole MACA page down,” she wrote on Dec. 24 on her personal Facebook page. She told eJP she wants an apology because the board had enabled the abuse against her.

During her time as board president, Rand made mistakes, she said, especially allowing people onto the board without knowing them well enough. It’s a mistake she wouldn’t make now that she has known many group members for over two years. 

“I was an ordinary schmuck who started a Facebook group,” she said. “I had no background in this. I think I’ve gotten better at it, but I’m not saying, ‘Oh, everything I did was great.’ It wasn’t. I made a lot of mistakes along the way, a lot, and I wasn’t always easy to deal with and I wasn’t always making the best decisions. I was really caught quite off guard in the way that it got so big so fast.”

Along with an apology, Rand wants the board to create a contract stating that she would have veto power over any new board members and that she is allowed “at board meetings, even if I don’t have any voting rights.” She also wants a larger board representing a vast geographic landscape.

“There are people who have wanted to become part of MACA to boost their own visibility,” she said. “I don’t know what to say because there’s no money in this. I’ve never made a dime. It’s only cost me money. But maybe [they wanted leadership positions in the organization] to build some kind of reputation in the Jewish community.”

In exchange for veto power and the right to sit in on the board, Rand said she will allow board members access to the Facebook group, with them managing it and choosing their own moderators. After the dispute began, she banned the board members from the group and changed the name of the group to “Parents Against Campus Antisemitism” as a way to ensure her ownership over the page. She hopes to change it back once Meta allows another name change in mid-January. She only banned the board “for a time, just while I was trying to get my eggs together,” she said. She has since sent the board members new friend requests.

Rand admits to setting firm rules that can lead to banning in the Facebook group, but disputes that it was thousands, as former board members have claimed, one of the major conflicts between her and the board. “I will remove people who are not Zionists. If I see stuff about Israel committing genocide, you’re gone. If I see you’re supporting Mamdani, you’re gone. However, that’s all. I don’t care if you love Trump. I don’t care if you hate Trump.”

While she’d love to come to an agreement, she is busy seeding a new organization, Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism, whose Facebook group name is “AZIAS NYC – a 501c4.” 

Jews “don’t have enough allies” in politics, she said, “and we don’t have enough of our own people running for office, and I’m now going to create a 501(c)(4), which has more of the ability to actually be political, to lobby and support candidates.” She’s currently filing the necessary paperwork and promoting it in the MACA Facebook group. 

Rand stated she posts information about the dispute with the board publicly “because people have spent money [on MACA], they have a right to know about what’s happened,” Rand said.

Since the organization’s launch, Rand claims to have raised over $100,000, with the funds paying for insurance, speakers, costs related to New York City’s Israel Day on Fifth parade and trademark battles that have cost “a lot of money” due to being “contested by another group.”

Rand disputed the idea that she had hoped to merge with Jewish National Fund-USA or any other organization. “There was a very large Jewish organization who wanted to, or they said they wanted to, give us a grant, and it was a lot of money,” Rand said. “However, for reasons that I’m not completely sure about, that did not happen, and the person who was our contact there left, and that may have been part of it. However, I never wanted to merge.”

A spokesperson from JNF-USA, whom former members said Rand hoped to merge with, told eJP that “Jewish National Fund USA did not offer Mothers Against Campus Antisemitism or Elizabeth Rand a $400,000 grant, and we have not pursued any merger or acquisition with the organization. If the idea of a merger was discussed at all, it was raised by Ms. Rand, not by Jewish National Fund USA.”

Rand has appeared for JNF-USA as a speaker at the organization’s Global Conference for Israel last November, and MACA is listed on the JNF-USA’s college campus resource page. 

Instead of receiving a statement from the MACA board apologizing, Rand received a cease-and-desist letter on Friday signed by Heather Binder, the MACA secretary, on behalf of MACA Foundation, Inc., which Rand promptly posted on her personal Facebook. 

“Your lack of legal authorization, misuse of assets, funds, time, relationships, intellectual property, abuse of the public trust and damage to the reputations of MACA, the board, individual board members and other MACA volunteers and members now requires legal action,” the letter said. “If you do not comply with the demands and cease and desist the activities described herein, MACA will begin filing litigation proceedings.”

The letter accuses Rand of changing the Facebook group name without authorization, as well as giving “unauthorized access to moderators and administrators who themselves have zero authority as it relates to the [MACA] Foundation.” Rand is also accused of banning board members “several times” since her resignation, which “followed prior incidents in which board members were similarly restricted.” 

The letter also states that since Rand’s resignation, previously agreed-upon moderators were removed from the page and, along with badmouthing board members, Rand is accused of “body shaming people from your personal and professional spheres.” Rand was also told that she is not allowed to promote her new organization on the MACA page. 

According to the letter, philanthropists have pulled donations, “citing the instability of MACA they have seen on the MACA Facebook page caused by you,” and speakers for MACA’s winter programming have also voiced concerns about the organization’s ability to fulfill its mission.

“There is no ambiguity regarding ownership or control of the MACA Facebook group,” the letter said. “Consistent with MACA’s name and trademarks, the MACA Facebook group is an asset of the MACA Foundation.”

The letter demands that Rand release all MACA assets, including the website, bank accounts, credit cards and mailing address and transfer control of the Facebook group to the board immediately. Rand is also asked to refrain from badmouthing the board and MACA and repay MACA $10,000 for “wasting of assets and fraudulent misrepresentation.” No longer can Rand claim ownership of the group, the letter said. 

The board members make one final demand from Rand: “We would also expect a full, public apology on your part to the board, MACA and the MACA members, due to your unprofessional and illegal behavior.” 

The dispute between the board and Rand has taken the group away from its mission of advocacy and community, Anne Isacowitz Scarvie, who has been a MACA group member since nearly the beginning. “The majority of people there were concerned parents, Jews, citizens, and we’re there for information and to share our trauma and not feel alone,” she told eJP. 

The dispute between Rand and the board has been “tragic,” she said, comparing it to a car accident people couldn’t turn away from. “There’s only one side of the story we’re hearing, and that one-sided story is being trumpeted from rooftops.” Many MACA followers accept that version without question, she said.

What dismayed her the most was the personal information about others Rand has posted, especially private email correspondences. “Whatever this communication was, it was not intended to be shared with 60,000 people,” she said. “Actual names were used…I saw it as representing the worst of lashon hara, which is gossip…This was bashing somebody’s reputation in a very public forum.”

For Frieda Fuchs, editor of Middle East Quarterly, who used to teach at Ohio’s Oberlin College,  MACA was “like a haven for me.” 

Fuchs’ husband, a professor at the college, had his office vandalized after Oct. 7, and when she ran for a local office, she was “targeted as a Zionist,” she told eJP. MACA provided a place to vent and to inform parents what was occurring on campus. 

In December 2023, Fuchs helped oust Oberlin College Professor of Religion Mohammad Jaffar Mahallati for covering up the mass execution of political prisoners in Iran and credits MACA’s support with making it happen. 

Rand “did something super important,” Fuchs said. “And she’s obviously very well connected. She fundraised. She has a lot of pull in the New York community. She brought in a lot of members, but the board as well, they’ve been working tirelessly at her side… I just don’t think it’s good to air your dirty laundry.”

MACA is a “a case study for well intentioned people who want to try and make a difference, but haven’t thought through the strategy or talked enough to the players already involved,” an anonymous Hillel director told eJP. 

Whenever antisemitism spikes on campus, similar organizations arise, he said. “What always happens is almost all of these groups disappear within like five or six years, because what they realize is that Hillel and Chabad are the two mainstays that are actually doing the work on campus, and if you are not working with them, you are not going to accomplish very much.”

Since Oct. 7, many Jews have felt legacy institutions haven’t been doing enough, including Hillel and Chabad. “The truth is these organizations are doing an unbelievable amount of work,” the Hillel director said. “When you are on the outside, and you’re just angry, it’s easy to say, ‘Oh, these legacy institutions are failing us.’”

MACA is “really good at turning up the heat,” he said, which can help push for change, but also cause harm. “They believe that every single issue of antisemitism that happens on campus should be amplified and shared broadly.” Sometimes it’s not productive to have 60,000 “friends but strangers all up in arms about this incident that we might be able to solve and change policy on with when the whole world’s eye is not directly on it.”

Still, the MACA community can be a helpful tool, the Hillel director said, because administrators know that if they don’t act right this community will come for them.

The current rift within the movement will not harm college administrators’ view of MACA because “I don’t think anyone outside of the Jewish community is aware that this has happened,” he said. “This obviously hurt the credibility amongst the members of the Facebook group. I also think that if they play their cards right, three months from now, no one will remember this because most people just want a place to go when they’re upset about something, [to] share it and have people validate their anger.”

Many Jewish students actually don’t want their parents speaking for them, the Hillel director said. “When you’re in college, you want the opportunity to explore and figure things out for yourself, and part of the appeal is doing that independently from your parents, and the more you feel like your parents are invading that college space, the more likely you are to take on a position that’s different from your parents.”

This is why many parents post anonymously in the group, saying they are doing it because they want to protect their child on campus. In reality, he believes, it has more to do with their child getting upset with them for getting involved and speaking for them.

A major lesson from MACA is that “one of the of the failings of Hillel and Chabad and most of the other legacy institutions is that, by and large, we have not figured out how to best take [these college parent’s] energy and passion and desire to be part of the solution and harness it into productive volunteership outside of fundraising.” Part of the reason for this is that Hillel staff are stretched thin already, he said, and coordinating this takes a lot of time. 

Groups like MACA become powerful because they make parents who feel powerless feel productive and validate their feelings. 

As of Monday morning Rand’s posts calling out the board in the MACA group and her personal page remain up. So does the promotion of her new Facebook group in the MACA group. On her personal page, she shared the board’s email address so followers can email them to demand they resign, adding a disparaging insult aimed at the board secretary.

But Rand remains “hoping we can work something out,” she told eJP on Sunday. She’s been in talks with the board treasurer, who, she said in a Facebook post, “is the only one who has always been kind to me.” Rand even accepted her back into the Facebook group. They plan to have a meeting on Monday morning.

“I’ll do whatever I can to end this animosity and move on,” Rand said, adding that she wants the board to stop “harassing her” and still wants an apology. “I want this to end and get back to what’s really important.”