On May 2, the University of Michigan held its annual commencement ceremony. Nine thousand graduates and almost 60,000 attendees gathered at the Big House to hear a variety of notable speakers — former U-M basketball player Jalen Rose, athlete and Olympian Michael Phelps and U-M President Domenico Grasso. But it was the speech by outgoing Faculty Senate chair Derek R. Peterson that became the focus of national attention as he discussed historic campus events.
He spoke of Sarah Burger, a supporter of suffrage who fought for women to gain admission into the University of Michigan in the 19th century. He also praised efforts that increased Black and Jewish student representation at the University.
Toward the end of his speech, he encouraged the audience to remember and sing for them when they sing the University’s fight song “The Victors.” He added:
“Sing for the pro-Palestinian student activists who have, over these past two years, opened our hearts to the injustice and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza.”
President Domenico Grasso issued a public apology for Professor Peterson’s remarks, calling them inappropriate, insensitive and a violation of U-M’s “institutional neutrality.” The speech and the University’s response have brought some public officials and at least one Regent to call for Professor Peterson to be investigated and disciplined. Alan Wald, H. Chandler Davis Collegiate Professor Emeritus, responds in defense of Professor Peterson. Interestingly enough, W. Chandler Davis was a professor at the University who was fired during the anti-Communist 1950s. —The Editors
I SPEAK AS a Jewish research scholar who for 50 years has been exploring and writing on Jewish American political activists. Pro-Palestinian activists know this playbook by now. President Domineco Grasso spelled it out in his denunciation of Prof. Derek Peterson’s five-minute commencement speech: “Everyone in our community is entitled to their own views; but this was neither the time nor the place.”
The warning to the rest of us is clear: One can privately hold views critical of the Israeli state, but articulating them in any campus venue runs the risk of possible punishment by fungible and arbitrary policies and definitions. The U-M administration has taken the same approach with the Student Rights and Code of Conduct when it comes to protests that do what they are supposed to do — disrupt normal business.
Peterson did everything right. He met with administration officials prior to the commencement, reaching agreement on a general approach to his remarks. Peterson made it crystal clear that he would include brief praise for student activists and a condemnation of the war on Gaza. He also promised to remove the term “genocide” and omit the names of any protest organizations. In the following week he inserted a stronger denunciation of antisemitism, described the protestors as “pro-Palestinian,” and named the state whose policies he opposed as “Israel.”
Grasso alleges, in his statement, that this handful of words signifies that Peterson “deviated” from his approved text to the degree of requiring a public besmirching of his integrity; but it’s a claim that does not conform to any customary understanding of “deviation.” Yes, Peterson amplified and concretized, but he did not deviate from the approach he had proposed. Nor is it believable that these minor adjustments so transformed Peterson’s remarks to suddenly become “hurtful and insensitive.”
What Peterson’s slight adjustments did do, however, was provide Grasso with a convenient excuse to unleash people on the internet. Predictably, Peterson was deluged with hundreds of defamatory insults and threats claiming that he had committed an unprofessional breach of trust. True to form, U-M Hillel, a proudly Zionist organization deeply connected to the Israeli state, jumped in with the self-aggrandizing claim that his remarks did indeed “alienate the Jewish community.”
There are a wide range of perspectives about Jewish identity, Israel and Zionism among Jews. Any organization or individual claiming to speak on behalf of “the Jewish community,” especially as defenders of Israeli policy and in favor of curtailing political dissent, is playing a dangerous game.
The suggestion that Jews throughout the world are complicit with what is happening in Gaza feeds into antisemitic conspiracy theories. It’s an untruth made even worse when combined with the idea that suppressing and criminalizing dissident political views is being carried out on behalf of the interests of “the Jewish community.” Sundry Jews at the University felt thrilled that — in contrast to the many “hurtful and insensitive” statements regularly made about the protests by former President Santa Ono, several regents and former SACUA Chair Tom Braun — someone had finally expressed our views to enthusiastic cheers during graduation at the Big House.
The Michigan Daily, May 14, 2026