Legendary University of Michigan basketball player Jalen Rose is to address the school’s Class of 2026 at spring commencement, officials said.
Rose, a Detroit native and former NBA star, is also set to receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree, the school said.
He was a member of UM’s vaunted “Fab Five,” which included Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King, and Ray Jackson. Led by the quintet, the team made back-to-back NCAA national title game appearances in 1992 and 1993 under coach Steve Fisher.
Rose, who played in the National Basketball Association for 13 years before retiring in 2007, is the star of the new Detroit-filmed TV series “South West High” on Tubi. He also founded the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy charter high school in Detroit.
Rose made news this past week when he said during an appearance with Chris Webber on TNT Sports’ “The Steam Room” with Ernie Johnson and Charles Barkley that the Fab 5 would have been treated differently at Michigan State University “because that’s a basketball school.”
The topic arose when Barkley said Auburn’s basketball team was treated worse than the football team. Webber acknowledged that his team at Michigan “was great,” but he and Rose complained about the food.
“That’s definitely a football school,” Rose said about Michigan, “and I know people are not going to like this — if we went to Michigan State, they would treat us different because that’s a basketball school. … And, yes, the football team, when you’re having 115, 120,000 (in attendance) every Saturday, that’s a football school. That’s what it’s going to be. We did sense that, we did feel that, and we still sense and feel that right now as we’re not being acknowledged by the university.”
Spring commencement is scheduled for May 2 at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor.
Four others are also expected to receive honorary degrees from the university at the ceremony, the school said in a statement Thursday. They are:
∎ Shirin Ebadi, Iranian Nobel-winning human rights lawyer, Doctor of Laws.
∎ Ingeborg Hochmair, electrical engineer and cochlear implant pioneer, Doctor of Engineering. She will also deliver the address at the Rackham Graduate Exercises on May 1 at the Crisler Center.
∎ Michael Phelps, world champion swimmer and Olympic record holder, Doctor of Laws.
∎ Ron Weiser, a former UM regent, businessman, philanthropist and former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, Doctor of Laws. His donations helped to establish the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia, among other efforts.
The UM regents approved conferring the degrees to the five recipients during its meeting on Thursday.
Past UM honorary degree recipients include musician Wynton Marsalis, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, journalist Christiane Amanpour, New York Yankees star Derek Jeter, artist Michele Oka Doner and economist and former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen.
@CharlesERamirez
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the number of years Rose played in the NBA.
