The University of Michigan is becoming a warning sign for American Jews.
Not because one professor said something outrageous. Not because one Senate candidate chose a disturbing campaign partner. Not because one regent candidate has been accused of circulating ugly anti-Israel and antisemitic material.
The warning is that all three are happening at the same time.
What was once dismissed as a fringe campus problem is no longer staying on the fringe. Anti-Israel radicalism is moving from protest encampments into commencement ceremonies, from campus organizing into statewide Democratic politics and from online extremism into respectable political company.
That is the story Michigan is telling us.
At this year’s University of Michigan commencement, professor Derek Peterson reportedly used the graduation stage to praise pro-Palestinian activists and indict Israel. A commencement ceremony should be a unifying civic moment. It should honor students and families who worked, sacrificed and waited years to celebrate that day.
Instead, the stage became another platform for the same one-sided moral theater that has infected campuses since Oct. 7. Israel is vilified. Palestinians are presented only as victims. Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad disappear from the story. The hostages disappear. The slaughtered families disappear. The years of suicide bombings, rocket attacks, tunnel warfare and terror financing disappear.
That erasure is not an accident. It is the point.
The problem is that respectable institutions are now opening the front door and calling it courage.
The anti-Israel movement depends on treating Palestinian terrorism as background noise—or worse, as “resistance.” It asks audiences to begin the story only after Israel responds. It demands sympathy without memory and outrage without context. And when professors adopt that framing from a commencement stage, they are not broadening debate. They are teaching moral illiteracy.
But Michigan’s warning does not end on campus.
Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, has campaigned with Hasan Piker, the wealthy socialist streamer who has drawn widespread criticism for saying America “deserved” 9/11 and for making comments seen by critics as praise for Hamas. El-Sayed says he does not agree with everything Piker has said. That’s not enough.
A Senate campaign is not a dorm-room debate. A candidate for national office chooses whose company to keep. When he appears alongside someone known for excusing America’s enemies and minimizing Hamas, he is not merely reaching young voters. He is helping launder extremism into ordinary politics.
Then there is Amir Makled, a Democratic nominee for the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents, who has been criticized for sharing pro-Hezbollah and antisemitic social-media material. The regents govern one of America’s leading public universities. They shape the policies, tone and accountability mechanisms that determine whether Jewish students are protected or abandoned.
If the same movement that has made Jewish students feel unsafe on campus can also elevate candidates into university governance, then the problem is no longer protest. It is capture.
Michigan is not alone.
Columbia’s anti-Israel turmoil became so severe in 2024 that the university canceled its main commencement ceremony. New York University and George Washington University saw graduation speeches turned into anti-Israel indictments. Harvard’s commencement was marked by a walkout by pro-Palestinian protesters. Cornell had a professor describe the Oct. 7 massacre in language that many heard as celebration. Stanford’s own report warned that antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias were “in the air.”
The names change. The pattern does not.
Nor is this only a Michigan or Ivy League story. In New Jersey, Rutgers has become part of the same national pattern. The university faced federal civil-rights scrutiny over its handling of antisemitism complaints. Its New Brunswick administration acknowledged reports of incidents targeting Jewish students, including the unauthorized use of a Jewish student’s image on anti-Israel posters in her dorm.
Rutgers negotiated with its Gaza encampment, agreeing to some demands while refusing divestment from Israel. Its faculty union later embraced a pro-BDS resolution. And a lecturer there was reported to have appeared on a webinar hosted by a Hamas-affiliated organization. Columbia may get the headlines, and Michigan may now be the political warning sign, but Rutgers proves the problem has reached America’s flagship public universities.
The danger is not that students criticize Israel. Students have always protested. Faculty members have always held political views. Candidates have always tried to appeal to activists.
The danger is that terrorism is being erased, anti-Zionism is being sanitized, and institutions that once claimed to teach moral seriousness now reward moral confusion.
This is how respectability is manufactured: First, a slogan appears on the quad. Then a professor repeats the assumption from the stage. Then a candidate borrows such energy for a campaign. And a governing-board candidate rides the same wave into power.
At each step, we are told not to overreact. It is only speech. It is only activism. It is only politics. It is only criticism of Israel.
But Jewish students know better. Jewish parents know better. Israelis know better. Victims of terrorism know better.
When Hamas is erased from Gaza, when Hezbollah is treated as a symbol of resistance, when Oct. 7 is blurred into “context” and when those who excuse terrorism are welcomed into polite company, this is no longer criticism of Israeli policy. It is the corruption of moral judgment.
The problem is not that extremists have found a home on campus. The problem is that respectable institutions are now opening the front door and calling it courage.
From Columbia to Rutgers to Michigan, the message to Jewish students is becoming unmistakable: Your safety is negotiable, your history is debatable, and your enemies may be honored as voices of conscience.
American Jews should stop pretending this is happening somewhere else. The laundering operation is already well underway.
