Controversy Around University of Michigan Commencement Highlights Ongoing Restrictions on Faculty and Student Speech
- Endangered Scholars Worldwide
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
Coming to the end of the 2025-26 academic year, controversy around graduation ceremonies once again highlights the extent of the restrictions on faculty and student speech on US campuses amid an ongoing nationwide crisis of academic freedom.
Recently, on May 2, 2026, University of Michigan President Domenico Grasso issued an apology for a speech delivered by Derek R. Peterson, Chair of the Faculty Senate and Professor of History and African Studies, at the university-wide commencement ceremony. In his speech, Peterson honored “the pro-Palestinian student activists” who have voiced opposition to “the injustice and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza.”
In the statement that came later on the same day, Grasso said that Peterson “made remarks regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict that were hurtful and insensitive to many members of our community,” that the speech does not represent the University of Michigan’s adopted position of neutrality, and that commencement should not be “a platform for personal or political expression.” Grasso further claimed that Peterson’s comments were “inappropriate” and that he had changed the content of his speech, which he had shared before the ceremony.
Peterson rejected the claim that he made substantive changes to his speech in an interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education. He said that he added the word “pro-Palestinian” to his description of student activists and replaced his reference to “what is happening in Gaza” with the phrase “Israel’s war in Gaza” in order to clarify, “as any other public speaker would”, the issue that the student activists were addressing. Following the speech, Peterson received hundreds of emails, many of which included threats, some of which he forwarded to the police out of fear for his safety.
The AAUP and the AFT released a joint statement on May 5, 2026, in support of Peterson, condemning the University of Michigan administration for failing to protect Peterson’s academic freedom as a member of the university community, as well as to protect him from the broader political backlash he faced, emphasizing that such public vilification of faculty can have very serious negative impacts on academic freedom, often leading to self-censorship.
Other universities have also implemented new restrictions around commencement speeches, especially those of student speakers. New York University (NYU) removed live speeches by student-elected speakers from its school-based ceremonies in March 2026. University administration revealed the policy change after some speakers had already been chosen. This new policy comes a year after NYU withheld the diploma of a student commencement speaker for referencing the genocide in Gaza. Live speeches by student-elected speakers were similarly removed from the graduation ceremony at the City University of New York School of Law in 2023 after a student speaker criticized the legal system, the New York Police Department, and the state of Israel.
According to recent reporting by Inside Higher Ed, the attempt of universities to rid their campuses of political activities and speech under the guise of “institutional neutrality,” which many universities did in the aftermath of the pro-Palestinian encampments in 2024 and the wave of student protests for divestment from Israeli companies, is having a serious negative impact on the freedom of student speech. Recent examples include the censorship of the phrase “No Kings” from a modern-day adaptation of the ancient Greek tragedy The Bacchae at Cape Fear Community College, and the censorship of references to environmental justice and the disproportionate impacts of climate change on certain communities on an Earth Day flier at the University of Utah, among others. In both cases, censorship was justified on the basis that universities had adopted policies of institutional neutrality.
Endangered Scholars Worldwide condemns the undue restrictions placed on the freedom of faculty and student speech as part of attempts to isolate university campuses from “political” issues. Such efforts run fundamentally against the mission of universities and the principle of academic freedom as the condition of free scientific inquiry by incentivizing self-censorship among students and faculty. We call on universities in the US to respect their community members’ right to free expression, especially regarding speech with political content, as they are most vulnerable to censorship. We invite the global community to join our call.
