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Over two and a half years after the start of the Gaza War on October 7, 2023, issues of Israel and Palestine still remain a hot-button topic on college campuses around the United States—and particularly during university commencements.
In an effort to prevent any issues, New York University canceled live speeches by students, as did CUNY School of Law, and schools including Rutgers and Georgetown Law have withdrawn invitations to scheduled commencement speakers. Other schools, including University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Howard University, have seen protestors take center stage at their graduation events. Here, all the schools where Israel-Palestine has impacted graduations:
New York University
Last year, a speaker at NYU’s Gallatin School invoked “atrocities” and “genocide” in Gaza during his speech, so this year, no individual programs will feature live speeches by students, only pre-taped remarks. “Graduation is a special rite of passage, and we feel enormous responsibility to our students and their families,” NYU spokesperson Wiley Norvell said. “The speakers we invite to ceremonies are there to speak for everyone, not only themselves.”
Student leaders have criticized the decision. “They want us to sit on the stage as our video plays next to us, which I think is so dumb,” Steinhardt senior, Maddy van der Linden, who was selected as her school’s student speaker, told NYU News. “This is not an isolated incident, together with the affinity group celebrations, it is an overall censorship of students. They’ve really turned our graduations into just their own political playgrounds.”
CUNY School of Law
Like NYU, there will be no live student speakers at CUNY School of Law’s graduation. “We have our voice taken away in what’s supposed to be our biggest moment,” said Josiah Ramesar, CUNY Law’s student government president. Gothamist reported that at an April protest outside the law school, a group of students had a banner that read “The more you try to silence us, the louder we will be” and chanted “Free Palestine.”
University of Michigan
At the start of the month, at University of Michigan’s commencement ceremony, Derek Peterson, the chair of the University of Michigan Faculty Senate, spoke about the school’s fight song, “Hail to the Victors.” He said, “Sing for the thousands of other students who have dedicated themselves to the pursuit of social justice over the course of centuries,” listing various professors and students, before saying, “sing for the pro-Palestinian student activists who have over these past two years opened our hearts to the injustice and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza.” In response, Michigan’s president, Domenico Grasso, issued a public apology. “We regret the pain this has caused on a day devoted to celebration and accomplishment,” he said, adding the speech “deviated from the remarks he had shared before the ceremony.”
Peterson later said he stood by the comments. “Michigan is not a finishing school for polite young men and women,” he said in a statement. “They do not need sentimental, cloying nostalgia. They need encouragement to face a flawed and unjust world head on, using the tools we’ve given them: critical reasoning, careful research, sympathy for the oppressed.”
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
This weekend, a group of students walked out of the UNC commencement ceremony at Kenan Stadium carrying Palestine flags and “Abolish ICE” signs. “This walkout symbolizes our rejection of this university upholding white supremacy and genocidal status quo,” read a post shared on transparUNCy.
Howard University
Over the weekend, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser was booed repeatedly while delivering a commencement address at Howard University, and her speech was interrupted by a student waving a Palestine flag. A statement released by a student group said graduating seniors organized a protest due in part to her “partnership” with the “genocidal” American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a bipartisan lobbying group for U.S.-Israel relations. “Why won’t Howard University take a public stance against anti-Blackness, capitalist greed, and war?” they wrote.
Rutgers University
Ahead of their commencement this week, Rutgers University canceled their speaker, Rami Elghandour, the CEO of biotech firm Arcellx and an alumnus of the New Jersey school. Elghandour, an executive producer of the Oscar-nominated film The Voice of Hind Rajab, said the decision was “heartbreaking.” “After a ‘few’ students complained about my selection as speaker because of my social media advocacy for Palestine, Rutgers has canceled my speech,” Elghandour wrote in a statement. “They decided that the feelings of a handful of students who said that my social media posts ‘opposed their beliefs’, were more important than the experience of the entire graduating class, the reputation of the school, the dignity and belonging of Arab and Muslim students, and the First Amendment.”
Rutgers told Democracy Now they withdrew his invitation “in response to objections from students regarding Mr. Elghandour’s social media posts, including one that shared an inflammatory claim, and following the Dean’s own discussions with Mr. Elghandour that raised concerns about whether the event and his remarks would remain consistent with the celebratory nature of the occasion, the School of Engineering decided to rescind the speaking invitation for the school convocation.” In response to questions about the withdrawal from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the school cited an April 20 tweet from Elghandour that accuses Israel of genocide and says the Israelis are “running dungeons where they train dogs to sexually assault prisoners.”
Georgetown University Law Center
Georgetown University’s law school withdrew an invitation to their commencement speaker, economist Morton Schapiro, after a widespread student protest. Per The Hoya, “Law Center students petitioned to remove economist Morton Schapiro as the commencement speaker last week, criticizing his views on the Israel-Hamas war, lack of a law degree, and response to Black Lives Matter protests during his tenure as Northwestern University’s president.” The petition, which began circulating April 27, read, “Schapiro is not a lawyer, has no connection to Georgetown and holds controversial, Zionist and harmful opinions.”
“In the past week, a number of law students raised concerns about Dr. Schapiro as commencement speaker, due primarily to opinion essays he published on Israel and Palestine in the aftermath of October 7, 2023,” Interim Dean Joshua Teitelbaum wrote in the email to students. “I have listened carefully to the students’ concerns. In my view, withdrawing our invitation to Dr. Schapiro would be inconsistent with Georgetown’s commitment to free and open inquiry as articulated in our Policy on Speech and Expression, and the University has not done so.”
UC Law San Francisco
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UC Hastings College of the Law building.
Ahead of their May 11 graduation, students received an email to order graduation keffiyehs to support Palestine. “At this year’s commencement, just as in the year before, we are organizing a keffiyeh order for graduation as a show of support with Palestinian students, faculty, and communities across the nation,” UC Law Associated Students, a student group, wrote in an email to campus.
Image above: Students protest in support of Palestine during the University of Michigan’s Spring Commencement ceremony on May 4, 2024 at Michigan Stadium