The University of Michigan Faculty Senate chair, who praised pro-Palestinian student protesters in his commencement speech, is pushing back on criticism and wants the university’s president to withdraw a statement denouncing the remarks.
Faculty Senate Chair Derek Peterson specifically took issue with part of U-M President Domenico Grasso’s statement that said Peterson “deviated from the remarks he had shared before the ceremony.”
“In fact, people in administration and I talked about how exactly to word it,” Peterson told the Detroit Free Press on May 5.
Peterson said he planned to talk to Grasso that same day, but it’s unclear whether that meeting happened. Peterson couldn’t be reached on May 6.
What the speech said
At the commencement ceremony on May 2 at Michigan Stadium, Peterson gave a 5-minute speech that opened with the story of Sarah Burger, who was twice denied admission to the University of Michigan in 1858 and again in 1859 because she was a woman.
“So the next time you sing ‘Hail to the Victors,’ our fight song, sing for Sarah Burger,” Peterson said at the commencement. “Sing for the thousands of other students who have dedicated themselves to the pursuit of social justice over the course of centuries.”
He then said to sing for Moritz Levy, the first Jewish professor at the University of Michigan, the students of the Black Action Movement, who he said demanded a curriculum based on their experiences and the identity of Black people in this country, and “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.”
The fallout from the comments was almost immediate, with a clip of the pro-Palestinian protests portion of Peterson’s speech circulating widely online shortly after the speech.
The comments came amid heightened tensions on campus after multiple protests over the Israel-Hamas conflict, which Jewish groups said created a hostile environment for students and staff. There has been a rise in claims of antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus alongside those protests.
Comments were meant to commend tradition of protests, Peterson says
Peterson told the Free Press he was trying to applaud the university’s long tradition of protest and “locate the pro-Palestinian protesters within this proud tradition of civil disobedience.”
He said he understands people’s experience with the pro-Palestinian encampment set up in 2024 on the Diag, an outdoor campus community space, was varied, but his was positive. Peterson said the protesters had a library full of books, ran seminars and held prayer meetings and he gave a talk to the assembled students on the history of student protest in Kenya, which is one of the topics he writes about.
“For many of us, it was a pedagogical opportunity, kind of a self-run university within the heart of the bigger institution,” he said. “For quite a while, many of us hoped that Michigan might chart a path forward that would incorporate the kind of energy behind the protests into a larger, more expansive sense of curriculum.”
Peterson said that’s what he had in mind during his speech, and that he doesn’t agree with all the protesters’ tactics, especially involving vandalism targeting U-M’s Board of Regents.
He said in retrospect, though, he would have added a line to his speech to sing to the Jewish student groups who, since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, have worked to keep the memory of the innocent dead alive on campus.
The university president said the comments were ‘hurtful’
Grasso’s statement said the comments “were hurtful and insensitive to many members of our community.”
“The Chair’s comments were inappropriate and do not represent our institutional position,” he said. “Nor do they represent the diversity of views across our entire faculty.”
Peterson said the university knew that he would say something about the war in Gaza and would highlight the student protesters’ roles in “opening our hearts to the inhumanity of the war in Gaza.”
“As it happened, I intentionally stayed within the lines that they drew,” he said. “I didn’t use the word genocide because it was thought by administrators to be unpolitic to use that word, even though I probably should have used the word because it’s an accurate description of what happened.”
The university provided the Free Press with a copy of the latest draft of the speech it received from Peterson before he spoke. The line that praises student activists reads: “Sing for the student activists, who have over these past few years sacrificed much to open our hearts to the injustices happening in Gaza.”
This version doesn’t include “pro-Palestinian” to describe the student activists and uses the verbiage “injustices happening in Gaza” rather than the phrasing Peterson used during the speech, which was: the “injustice and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza.”
How the broader community is reacting
The comments also have drawn criticism from the some Republican officials and candidates for the Board of Regents, while Peterson has received support from faculty, U-M alumni and labor groups.
Republican candidates for the two regent positions on this November’s ballot, Michael Schostak and Lena Epstein, said in a joint emailed statement on May 3 that they were “deeply troubled” by the university’s decision to feature Peterson as a speaker, and “even more disappointed in his choice to use this platform to deliver his anti-Israel rhetoric to our graduates, families and a watching world.”
In a post on the social media site X, Schostak later said the statement from Grasso “misses the mark,” and called on the university to “put him on leave without pay, strip him of administrative support or research assistants, cut his expense budget,” among other things.
The American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers, meanwhile, urged the university on May 5 “to affirm unequivocally that Professor Peterson will face no discipline for his protected speech, to reject external efforts to dictate the terms of academic expression and to recommit itself to the principles of academic freedom and shared governance that are foundational to its mission.”
Contact Adrienne Roberts: amroberts@freepress.com
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Fallout grows after U-M speech that praised pro-Palestinian protesters
Reporting by Adrienne Roberts, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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