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Shamai Leibowitz Informed Comment
I am a Jewish American-Israeli, and a veteran of the IDF. But according to the University of Michigan administration, I am someone who needs to be protected from the truth.
On May 2, the University did not merely censor this year’s commencement speech. It treated the mention of Palestinian humanity as a radioactive heresy that had to be scrubbed from the record as if a crime had been committed.
The “outrageous” remarks were delivered by Professor Derek Peterson, a distinguished historian. During his address, Peterson suggested that the greatness of the University lies not so much in its scoreboard but rather in its pursuit of justice. He honored a list of pioneers: Sarah Burger, who paved the way for women to be admitted; Moritz Levi, the first Jewish professor, who opened doors for generations of Jewish students; and the Black Action Movement, which fought for the inclusion of Black people.
Then, he dared to praise a coalition of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim students who protested the worst man-made humanitarian catastrophe of this century. Specifically, he commended the pro-Palestinian student activists for opening our hearts to the “injustice and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza.”
For this act of empathy, President Domenico Grasso issued a groveling apology on behalf of the administration for “hurtful and insensitive” remarks. It was a masterclass in institutional spinelessness. To honor Jewish professors is commendable. To honor Black students is noble. But to suggest that Palestinians, too, possess human rights worth defending—that, in this administration’s view, is heresy.
It takes a profound level of moral bankruptcy to turn a blind eye to Israel’s campaign of mass killing and destruction that a global consensus of human rights organizations—including the Israeli groups B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, as well as the International Association of Genocide Scholars—has called the commission of genocide. The real scandal, apparently, is not the slaughter itself, but the possibility that a few donors might have had their commencement brunch disturbed by hearing those crimes named aloud.
The irony is staggering. University leaders oversee an institution supposedly devoted to truth. Yet they react to a call for empathy with the same reflexive suppression one might expect from a white Southern university in the Segregation era, terrified of the “subversive” idea that Black Americans should be granted equal rights.
The administration’s official statement claimed that commencement was “neither the time nor the place” for such remarks.
This rationale raises the obvious question: When, exactly, is the “correct” time to acknowledge the systematic destruction of every hospital in Gaza and the killing of nearly 1,000 doctors, nurses and medics? Is there a pre-approved window during which the University of Michigan permits its faculty to decry the murder of more than 21,000 children? Or is there a donor-vetted litmus test to determine which atrocities we are allowed to name?
As a Jewish lawyer and activist who knows this conflict intimately, I find the University’s “outrage” to be particularly ignorant and insulting. We are not protected by the silencing of truth. The administration does not honor our history or the Jewish idea of speaking truth to power by censoring those who acknowledge these horrors and appeal to conscience. Instead, it brings shame and embarrassment upon this world-renowned academic institution.
This censorship serves as a grim reminder that under the current leadership, academic freedom and the pursuit of truth end exactly where the protection of donor money begins. It must be a heavy burden for these administrators to carry all that “hurt” while tens of thousands of human beings are being extinguished.
Derek R. Peterson Michigan graduation remarks 2 May 2026
Shamai Leibowitz is an Israeli-American adjunct professor of Hebrew at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. He holds a law degree from Bar Ilan University, and a Master’s in International Legal Studies from The Washington College of Law. On Saturdays, he reads the Torah at his synagogue in Silver Spring, Maryland. DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in his articles are solely his, and do not represent the official views of any institution with which he is affiliated.
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