POLITICS 88 : CAMPAIGN ’88 : Jackson and Michigan

Some Michigan State University trustees are questioning plans for Jackson to deliver the university’s winter commencement address two weeks before the state’s Democratic caucuses.

Opponents have said that allowing Jackson to speak would break a 71-year-old tradition. Since 1917, no candidate for public office has addressed Michigan State graduates.

Joel Ferguson, a trustee who also is Jackson’s Michigan campaign director, said Jackson was scheduled to deliver the March 12 address before declaring he would seek the Democratic presidential nomination. Michigan Democrats will hold their caucuses March 26.

Ferguson said the speech would be non-political, something other trustees doubted.

“There’s absolutely no way he can write a speech that doesn’t look and sound presidential,” Trustee Thomas Reed said. “Even when he comes here and talks about his grandmother, it will have some political overtones.”

Several notable politicians have given commencement addresses at Michigan State, including then-Vice President Richard M. Nixon in 1957 and former President Harry S. Truman in 1960, but none was running for office at the time.