I returned to the University of Michigan, my alma mater, to attend a family member’s graduation and to spend several meaningful days in Ann Arbor. Three generations of our family gathered there, united by a shared history with the university across undergraduate and graduate programs, including business, engineering, law and medicine.

What should have been a unifying celebration instead left us deeply unsettled.

The commencement address delivered by Professor Derek R. Peterson, a tenured historian at the University of Michigan, did not, in our view, reflect the spirit or responsibility of the occasion. Rather than focusing on graduates and their families, the remarks were widely experienced by attendees—including ourselves—as overtly political and, for many, deeply alienating and inappropriate for an official university ceremony. Peterson hijacked the commencement ceremony praising anti-Israel protesters.

Commencement ceremonies are among the most visible institutional moments of endorsement and unity. When a faculty member uses that platform in a way that appears to single out or marginalize a group in front of a stadium-sized audience, it........

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