Derek R. Peterson, a professor of East African history at the University of Michigan, delivered a speech to the graduating class. It was a nice speech. He praised the activists on campus, and the students cheered.
Sing for the students of the Black Action Movement, whose members demanded a curriculum that would reflect the experience and identity of black people in this country.
Sing for the pro-Palestinian student activities who have over these past two years opened our hearts to the injustice and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza.
The greatness of this institution does not only rest on the shoulders and on the accomplishments of our student athletes who deserve all the congratulations we can offer them.
It was honest, accurate, acknowledged student activists, and didn’t demean any of the people in the crowd. Except…hoo boy, it enraged Zionists and Republicans and Israeli donors to the university. The response was ridiculously over the top.
The same day, the university’s president, Domenico Grasso, issued a public apology, saying the comments were
inappropriate and do not represent our institutional position.
We regret the pain this has caused on a day devoted to celebration and accomplishment,Grasso said, adding that Peterson’s speechdeviated from the remarks he had shared before the ceremony.The swift apology did not stop some Republican officials, including Florida Sen. Rick Scott, from calling for the school to be stripped of federal funding. A Republican member of the Board of Regents, which governs the public university, also hinted at possible discipline for the professor. The prominent Israeli-American investor Adam Milstein urged Jewish people to halt any donations to the school.
This is madness. Are they claiming that there is no unjust and inhumane war in Gaza? It’s ongoing. People are starving, they’re being shot by the IDF, their homes are being bombed and bulldozed. Professor Peterson said no lie. Is the institutional position
pro genocide? Peterson has made an excellent reply to the hysterical nonsense.
I have respect for Regent Hubbard and her colleagues: theirs is not an easy job, and we here at Michigan benefit from their leadership.
I would however urge Regent Hubbard to review the comments I actually made at yesterday’s commencement. It should not be controversial to have one’s “heart opened to the inhumanity and injustice of Israel’s war in Gaza”, which is what I credited activists with doing. Having an open heart to other people’s suffering is a fundamental human virtue. It is a quality that I hope we teach our students, whatever their political posture might be.
So I am mystified about what I have done to earn Regent Hubbard’s ire. I have – like many of us here in Michigan – been convicted by the evidence of human suffering in Gaza; and I credit my awareness of that to pro-Palestinian activists. That is why I gave the speech that I did. On a day meant to honor students for their accomplishments, I thought it important that we would honor the student activists who have, over the course of time, pushed the institution toward justice.
The University has taken down the commencement video. But here is my talk, if you’d like to hear the whole of it. As you will see, it is a talk about the salience of student activism in this institution’s long history.
Allow me to add, if I may:
The idea that graduations should be apolitical is ridiculous. Michigan is not a finishing school for polite young men and women. Our students are not wilting flowers. They have just finished their degrees at the foremost public university in the country. They can handle controversy.
They do not need sentimental, cloying nostalgia. They need encouragement to face a flawed and unjust world head on, using the tools we’ve given them: critical reasoning, careful research, sympathy for the oppressed.
That is why I spoke as I did. If parents want sentimental graduation ceremonies, perhaps they should send their kids to a different institution. Here at UM we teach our students to face controversies, not run away from them. That’s what being the leaders and the best is about.”
There are a lot of people pushing the idea that a university should be apolitical; they are typically the kind of craven cowards who want to maintain the status quo, no matter how intolerable it might be. Alternatively, they have a political agenda which they want to promote by silencing critics, and they are backed by wealthy and influential supporters who do not question the vicious militants who want to carry out an ethnic cleansing in Israel.
I am shocked by the authoritarian, anti-free-speech actions taken by the University of Michigan and others (what the hell does Rick Scott have to do with Michigan?) who are loudly screeching about their intent to persecute Derek Peterson and the faculty and students of the University of Michigan.
We really need to kick these weird Zionist fanatics out of power.
A handful of students at U.S. universities also faced discipline in 2025 for seeking to highlight pro-Palestinian issues at graduation ceremonies, including a graduate of New York University whose diploma was withheld for criticizing Israel in a speech.
Expressing criticism in a speech is pretty much the definition of free speech, and those creepy zealots are the real opponents of freedom.
Palestinians are one group of people that it is
perfectly okimperative to hate, dehumanize, and wish erasure upon. Expression of the slightest sympathy for them makes you an antisemite.Actually I should have put “Palestinians” in scare quotes as only the Jewish diaspora has any claim to Eretz Yisrael because the Bible and a rump presence there amongst non-existent Arabs before the aliyah waves.
Jordan was stolen land given to the Hashemites therefore Jordan is now begrudgingly “Palestine”. It was included on the Irgun and Herut logos.
I applaud that professor’s bravery to speak those honest, positive caring words. This country is looking more and more like a plutocratic, fascist-run Death Spiral nightmare of hate and violence and insensitivity to the people besieged by the hate and violence of the magats. I keep hearing Martha and the Vandellas singing in my head.
I am so angered by the aholes that will not accept that opposing the zionist israeli governments need to commit theft of land and genocidal murders against all their ‘enemies’ is not the same as antisemitism. There are still decent, caring Jews in israel as well as everywhere else in this crumbling world. There are too many xtian terrorist zionist aholes that wield too much power in this country.
As a German, I’ve learned at school that genocide is bad, and that you’re supposed to at least speak out against mass atrocities.
This position appears to be as popular as ever…
When your problem with genocide is what side of the concentration camp fence you were on, you’re doing it wrong.
Okay.
I’m not sure how to put this, but I think the conflict in Gaza stopped being a war almost immediately.
I know the media keeps reporting it as such, but it became murder, not war.
The current problem is that the lie persists.
Michigander here. Rick Scott can fuck all the way off. Since assholes from other states can call for stuff, I hereby call for revoking Florida’s statehood.
Yes, that is exactly what they’re claiming. Here in the UK, we’ve recently been treated to a lot of screaming denunciations of anybody who even tries to put any casualty figures on Israel’s actions in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, to the extent that even entirely mainstream news reporting is being called “pro-Hamas propaganda” – all in the service of attempts to discredit Zack Polanski, the Jewish leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, and to ban any protest in favour of Palestinian rights. The position seems to be that any mention of Palestinian casualties is “blood libel” and automatically antisemitic.
@ ^ Dunc : FWIW & If memory serves; the IDF itself accepted a Palestinian death tollin gaza that agreed witht hat cited by Hamas a few months or so ago.
Hang on..
Source : https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-believes-70000-gazans-killed-in-war-as-claimed-by-hamas/
Guess we have to now ask if the IDF and the Times of Israel are now anti-Semitic eh?
Is this not a thing that’s widely known? I knew it so I figure plenty of others therefore do too. .
I repeat gere what should be widely known by now but is swept under the carpet.
The DNA of iron-age people in Palestine match that of current Palestinians. They underwent two religion swaps and a language transition as a result of ‘elite dominance’- first by Romans/Byzantines, then by Arabs.
Apart from a small group that retained the Jewish religion all the time while staying, the current Israeli Jews have a strong signature of European DNA.
The name Palestine goes back to at least Ramses III (Peleset) and a tenth-century kingdom in the Levant. Isra-El is a term used by the local worshippers of El (later Jahweh).
The leading coterie of the British Labour party were financed by a group of millionaires while the socialist Corbin was party leader, attracting the hatred of the wealthy. They also have strong lies with the Israeli lobby. After Corbin and his supporters were purged, Labour has been staunchly pro-Israeli.
After a recent event – a schizophrenic muslim man who was released from hospital too early and stabbed a muslim and two Jews – the prime minister focused on the stabbing of the Jews, with support of the conservative press and BBC.
.
This was a welcome opportunity to change the debate from the Epstein friend Mandelson who had been appointed ambassador to USA by Keir Starmer against the recommendation of the civil service.
Myself @ 11
I forgot, I meant to say this is another example of being obisquious to Israel and Netanyahu.
That is true but it goes deeper than that.
The ancient DNA is Canaanite and it matches the current residents of the Israel area.
It matches with the Palestinians, the Jews, and the Lebanese.
Hebrew is a Canaanite language and the Jews were just another tribe of Canaanites.
The Ashkenazi Jews and Mizrahi Middle Eastern Jews are about equal in Israel’s population.
It’s ironic that the current residents of the Israel area are descended from Canaanites and are closely related to each other although there have been other genetic inputs over the millennia.
Nothing about the UM administration response surprises me in the slightest. The Epstein class is more islamaphobic than it is antisemitic. Reminder that there was plenty of support of Zionists from extreme antisemites who wanted the Jews to all leave their countries, it wasn’t just Jews themselves wanting a place to live (disregarding who was already there).
Video of Derek Peterson’s commencement speech is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu0xsQtkMC4
His speech was excellent in thanking students for advocating for the disempowered at UMich, from the first woman to apply back in the 19th century, to the first Jewish professor, to the Palestinians plight today. The university should thank him, but of course donation money talks loudest.
Thinking people talking about Gaza I can’t help but notice how it’s “funny” that all the anti-Democratic “third spoiler party” douches and trolls seem to have forgotten all about Gaza now Trump is – predictably and as predicted – committing a far worse genocide there. Certainly more complicit and doing more to help Trump than former President Joe Biden ever did – remembering the facts that Biden took action in withholding some weapons, sanctioning some extremist Israeli settlers and calling for restraint from and openly criticising Netanyahu.
Wonder when they are going to speak up against and try to punish “Genocide Don” – or was it all just a pro-Repug thing to help the fascist party all along? It’s
almostexactly like they never actually cared about Gazans at all & their whole shtick was just about helping Trump.Anyone reckon the Abandon Biden-Harris movement is going to change into an Abandon Trump one or are they happy with having made things far worse for the people and cause they claimed to support?
Help Netanyahu that is – the Abandon -Biden-Harris, Stein’s klowns folks helped Trump to help Netanyahu.