Last December, Elizabeth Rand, the founder of the Facebook group Mothers Against College Antisemitism, told eJewishPhilanthropy that the Facebook group “will die with me.”

Days later, on Jan. 2, she received a cease-and-desist letter from the MACA Foundation, Inc., the nonprofit that grew out of the group, accusing her of changing the Facebook group name without the board’s authorization, giving non-MACA Foundation representatives unauthorized leadership roles in the Facebook group and banning — and publicly criticizing — board members.

Rand was asked to transfer control of the Facebook group to the board immediately.

Last Thursday, she received a second letter with similar requests, signed by Seth Bursky, a Melville, N.Y., lawyer representing the MACA Foundation, offering a “limited window to avoid litigation.” The deadline to comply was July 21, 2026. As of Wednesday morning, Rand remains one of the group’s three administrators. 

Rand created the MACA Facebook group soon after the Oct. 7 terror attacks, and in less than a month, the group amassed over 42,000 members — affectionately known as MACAbees — reaching 60,000 within a year.

The group served as a support system for mothers struggling with a post-Oct. 7 world where campuses were teeming with anti-Israel protests and outright antisemitism. The group gave them a platform to connect and organize. Together, mothers flooded campus administrators’ inboxes and voicemails with complaints, calling for professors to be fired, pro-Palestinian programming to be canceled and Israel divestment resolutions to be rejected.

Rand was the public face of the movement, appearing in media appearances, including in The New York Times. 

“I was an ordinary schmuck who started a Facebook group,” Rand told eJP last December, saying that the group ballooned faster than expected. She declined to comment for this piece.

Seeking to turn the group into a “legitimate organization, not just a Facebook group,” Rand applied for 501(c)(3) status, and in December 2023, The MACA Foundation, Inc. was approved.

But Rand had a full-time job as a Manhattan-based lawyer and felt that “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,” she said. So on Nov. 10, 2025, she resigned as board president, giving up any power over the organization she had.

“Elizabeth Rand was the founder of this 501(c)(3),” Geri Cohen, a Dallas-based lawyer, MACA board member and MACA’s vice president of legal, told eJP. “She was the initiator. She was the founder, and we’ve been very public about being beyond grateful for that, because in a sea of aftermath of immense horror, she was the one who stood up and created this public 501(c)(3) nonprofit. However, by her own words and her own action, she has removed herself entirely from the foundation.” 

When Rand turned the organization into a nonprofit, she no longer ran it. “The board doesn’t even own it,” Cohen said. “This is all nonprofit 101.”

Other nonprofit experts, including Laura Solomon, founder and owner of Laura Solomon & Associates, a law firm devoted to the formation and representation of charities and philanthropic individuals, agree that when a founder of a non-membership charity, unlike a family foundation, leaves a board of directors, they have no ownership over the assets or power.

Even though Rand hasn’t served on the board or as leadership since November 2025, she never handed off control of the Facebook group, which Cohen described as an asset of the foundation. When discussing the original letter, Solomon also stated that, without knowing the specifics of the situation, “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.” And that asset provides access to 60,000 members.

The original cease-and-desist letter, sent in early January, was prompted by a dispute between Rand and a previous board member, whom Rand said had cursed at her, mostly over banning too many people from the Facebook group. At the time, the Facebook group had become entrenched with infighting between Rand and her followers and others who empathized with the board. Rand had indeed blocked MACA board members from the Facebook group and began promoting a new organization, Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism or AZIAS NYC — a 501(c)(4) — in the MACA Facebook group.

After the board member with whom she was arguing was removed from MACA leadership, the cease-and-desist letter was sent, but Rand refused to give up the Facebook group. 

She also had demands: she wanted the board to apologize for the removed board member’s messages and to have a contract stating that she would have veto power over any new board members and the ability to sit in on board meetings, even if she didn’t have voting rights. In exchange, Rand would allow board members access to the Facebook group, with them managing it and choosing their own moderators. 

On Jan. 7, Rand announced a rapprochement via a message in the Facebook group. “We are committed to continuing respectful communications as we work towards our shared goals,” it said.

“We worked really hard and did our due diligence to come to a different option,” Cohen said. The solution the board and Rand agreed to was that Rand would continue to have control of the Facebook group as long as official MACA representatives were moderators and board members had access. “There would be no disparaging of each other.”

But still, Rand ultimately had the ability to make people moderators, to block people, to approve posts, to remove users, and in the months to come, board members began seeing their posts “pending” for long periods of time. Many weren’t approved, Miriam Zivin, MACA Foundation’s president of the board, told eJP. “Sometimes we were told, this was already posted or — keep it about this thread.”

In February, as the board began to promote a MACA delegation gathering at the Israel Day Parade in NYC in May, “more and more, we weren’t allowed to advertise the event and garner support,” Zivin said. “As of a few months ago — our names were not taggable. That turned into suspended accounts, and eventually being blocked. No reason was given for the decline — the blocking we figured out on our own.”

Still, MACA gathered at the parade, held on Fifth Avenue on May 31, with the largest delegation the organization ever had — 90 representatives. Rand was invited and attended. “She is the founder of the nonprofit, and so for us, it was [about] really wanting her to be there,” Cohen said.

There is a video posted on the MACA Instagram account of Cohen standing beside Rand on a New York City city street at the parade. “On behalf of the MACA Foundations, we are MACA Strong, Mothers Against College Anti-Semitism,” Cohen said to the camera. “Thank you to Liz Rand for founding this organization and for gathering us, even on social media. We were all together as one, and we are still strong, and we still have work to do.”

Then came last Thursday’s letter titled: “Demand, Cease and Desist and Litigation Hold.”

According to Rand, ever since the January agreement, she has repeatedly asked the board to publicly rescind the original cease-and-desist letter. “They didn’t have to apologize; just a few sentences that they officially rescinded it,” she wrote in a July 17 Facebook post in the MACA group. The Facebook group moderators, chosen by Rand, “didn’t want this thing full of lies on their books and records.”

Her request to the board was ignored, she said, and at the parade, they asked to be moderators of the Facebook group. “I discussed this with our [moderators,] and we all agreed that unless they rescind [the original letter], then no. Eventually we stopped posting their stuff and the result was a ridiculous letter from a half assed lawyer making the same baseless demands. And there you have it,” she wrote.

On Friday, Rand changed the Facebook group’s name to Parents Against College Antisemitism, yet Cohen said it still remains a MACA asset. “A NEW NAME, SAME MISSION with Elizabeth Rand leading the group,” the description said.

Throughout everything, the MACA Foundation has retained control of its Instagram account and its regional social media accounts in Michigan, Los Angeles, South Florida, New York and Houston. Rand herself has a personal Facebook account with thousands of followers as well as a Facebook group for AZIAS NYC.

The latest letter accuses Rand of fraudulently claiming to be MACA’s CEO, changing the name of the Facebook group and appointing her own moderators unconnected to MACA and of promoting AZIAS NYC in the MACA group. It asks her to stop acting on behalf of MACA, to give access of the Facebook group to the organization and remove posts advertising her new organization.

“Your failure to comply with these demands by July 21, 2026, will result in MACA initiating legal proceedings against you and the Unauthorized Administrator and Moderators,” the letter states, signed by Bursky.

There was never an agreement to give Rand access to the board without her being on the board, Cohen said. “If you are no longer involved in a 501(c)(3) as a board member or in any kind of operation, you aren’t privy to any board meetings, discussions, minutes.”

There is much Zivin and Cohen wish people could pay attention to instead of another dispute over the Facebook group. In the past year, the MACA Foundation has brought speakers to MACA groups and to campuses including travel blogger Tal Oran, Christian Zionist actor Nathaniel Buzolic, former spokesperson of the Israel Defense Forces Jonathan Conricus, pro-Israel content creator Zach Sage Fox and former Columbia professor Shai Davidai. MACA representatives have met with university presidents, created antisemitism courses for schools, held student parties and self-defense courses and assisted students with legal advice about anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

MACA has tabled, advocated for pro-Israel professors, helped create student Israel advocacy groups and built alliances with Persian, Christian and Hindu communities. Alongside the group Hate Ends Now, MACA brought a replica Nazi cattle car to three college campuses. 

“When other organizations do not help, they stay silent or they are afraid,” Cohen said. “We are the moms that are called, and we are the moms that show up.”

IRS filings show that the MACA Foundation raised $176,000 in 2025. “Not one dime of these donations that we have taken in has gone towards legal fees,” Cohen said. Instead, a single anonymous donor has covered all legal fees related to the MACA-Rand dispute.

Still, the controversy has hurt fundraising and is harming the foundation’s work, Cohen said. The “Facebook asset” is essential for advocacy and organizing. It’s where people go for community and to learn about antisemitism at schools that aren’t on the Anti-Defamation League’s Campus Antisemitism Report Card, which evaluates 150 schools.

Currently, in the MACA Facebook group, the posts that are approved by moderators applaud Rand’s work and condemn the board for threatening legal action, claiming that it is more proof of the Jews being divided at a time when enemies are at the gates. “This is more dangerous than all the antisemitism in the world,” one message said.

Zivin hopes that the organization can move past the controversy and remain focused on its goals. “We want to be the ones who are filling the void that existing Jewish organizations are leaving behind and the disservice that’s being done to these Jewish students as a result. In order to have that happen, we have to have the ear of people across the country, because we need those people to step up… Because [campus antisemitism] is not going to go away. If anything, it’s going to get worse.”