This past weekend at Stanford University, hundreds of students got up and left their own graduation ceremony, waving Palestinian flags, blowing whistles, and chanting slogans as Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage. Many then attended an alternative "People's Commencement," where the keynote address was delivered by notorious anti-Israel agitator Mahmoud Khalil.
The Stanford protest was not a spontaneous expression of conscience. The walkout was orchestrated by groups including Students for Justice in Palestine and No Tech for Apartheid. It was coordinated, choreographed, and aimed squarely at making one point -- that Jewish identity, the Jewish state, and any person or company that does business with Israel have no place in polite society.
Let's call this what it is -- antisemitism wearing the mask of activism.
And Stanford's response? Silence.
That is the real story.
Universities across this country have spent years condoning, and in some cases enabling, an environment in which hatred of the State of Israel, and the Jewish people as a collective, is treated as noble and disruption of Jewish-connected speakers as free speech, with Jewish students who object viewed as a problem.
Commencement ceremonies have often transformed into political circuses, and Jewish students have been made to feel unwelcome at their own celebrations.
None of this is happening in a vacuum. CAM's Antisemitism Research Center monitored a record-high 6,819 incidents across the globe in 2025, and these numbers are tracking even higher so far in 2026. Campuses are not separate from that trend. They are driving it.
It is past time for universities to act. And the most direct step available to them is the one they’ve avoided for too long -- imposing and enforcing consequences.
Institutions must make clear that interfering with commencement, the shared ceremony that belongs to every graduate, is a violation that carries real costs. Those costs should include the withholding or revocation of the diploma itself. A degree conferred by Stanford is not just a piece of paper. It is a credential backed by the university's name and reputation. When a graduate uses that credential, they invoke Stanford's authority. Stanford has both the right and the obligation to decide who exercises that authority and under what conditions.
This is not unprecedented. Universities already revoke degrees for academic fraud, for serious misconduct discovered after the fact, and for honor code violations. Obstructing a university-wide ceremony is a serious violation of communal standards. It should be handled as such. And every incoming student should be required, from day one, to complete a course in the history of hate. Not optional. Not a workshop. A graduation requirement.
Now ask yourself a simple question. If hundreds of Stanford graduates had walked out of a commencement address to protest a supporter of Black civil rights and then gathered for an alternative ceremony honoring someone who had led organized harassment of Black students, how long would the university's silence have lasted?
The answer would be measured in minutes, not days, as it should.
The double standard is the scandal. Antisemitism is not a lesser form of hate. It is not a political position. It is not activism. Commencement ceremonies at American universities have increasingly become venues for anti-Israel protest since the October 7th massacre. What we are witnessing is the normalization of hatred directed at one faith, one identity, and one country.
Universities pride themselves on preparing students to lead. You cannot lead if you have never been required to reckon with history. You cannot lead if your institution told you, through its silence, that some forms of hate are acceptable.
My son just graduated from Duke University. No walkout. No counter-ceremony. No Jewish families wondering whether their child's celebration would be hijacked. Just a son crossing a stage and a proud mother in the crowd. That is what commencement is supposed to be. Every family should be able to say the same.
Stanford's graduates earned their degrees. But an institution earns its reputation by what it demands of the people who carry its name. Right now, Stanford and other universities like it are expecting very little.
That has to change. The diploma should mean something. So should the moment it is handed over.
The writer is Chief Government Affairs Officer for the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) and leads CAM’s work with North American mayors. She is a former town supervisor of New Castle, New York.