The speech that got MIT's 2025 class president banned from graduation
On Thursday, Vemuri took to the stage at the OneMIT commencement ceremony, donning a keffiyeh — a traditional scarf worn by Arab communities that has been a symbol of Palestinian nationalism for decades — over her graduation gown. During her speech, Vemuri denounced Israel's war in Gaza and criticized the university for its ties to the country's military.
'Right now, while we prepare to graduate and move forward with our lives, there are no universities left in Gaza,' Vemuri said. 'We are watching Israel try to wipe out Palestine off the face of the earth, and it is a shame that MIT is a part of it.'
According to the Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry, at least 54,418 people have been killed and 124,190 injured in Gaza amid Israel's ongoing attack in the region since Hamas' terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. That attack killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and took around 250 hostage, according to Israeli counts.
Vemuri's speech starts around the 55:30 mark, and her remarks related to Gaza begin at the 56:00 mark:
At the end of her speech, Vemuri referenced a decades-old MIT tradition in which graduating students turn their class rings, featuring their university's mascot, 'Tim the Beaver,' outward, symbolizing that their time at MIT is now in the past.
'As you lift it off your fingers, notice that the beaver is no longer facing you; it is now facing the world,' Vemuri said. 'This is a world that we will be entering with an immeasurable responsibility. We will carry with us the stamp of the MIT name, the same name that is directly complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. And so we carry with us the obligation to do everything we can to stop it.'
After Vemuri finished her speech, Sally Kornbluth, the university's president, tried to settle the crowd. 'At MIT, we believe in freedom of expression. But today is about the graduates,' Kornbluth said.
Without naming Vemuri, MIT confirmed that she had been banned from Friday's events, after they said she delivered a speech a day earlier that was not the one provided to the school in advance of the event.
'While that individual had a scheduled role at today's Undergraduate Degree Ceremony, she was notified that she would not be permitted at today's events,' university spokesperson Kimberly Allen said in a statement. 'MIT supports free expression but stands by its decision, which was in response to the individual deliberately and repeatedly misleading Commencement organizers and leading a protest from the stage, disrupting an important Institute ceremony.'
Vemuri's speech quickly attracted criticism, including from House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called it 'Ignorant. Hateful. Morally bankrupt,' in a post on X.
'Where is the shame — or appropriate response from the institution? Have your children avoid MIT & the Ivy League at all costs,' Johnson wrote.
An MIT spokesperson told CNN that despite not attending Friday's ceremony, Vemuri will still receive her degree.
'What I am dealing with right now is absolutely nothing compared to the people of Palestine, and I'd take on much more if it meant helping their cause,' Vemuri told CNN on Sunday.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Netanyahu, Trump discuss Israel's Gaza plan, defeating Hamas
The two world leaders discussed Israel's plans to take over the remaining Hamas strongholds in Gaza with the goal of ending the war by freeing the remaining hostages and defeating Hamas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with US President Donald Trump on Sunday, the Prime Minister's Office announced. The two world leaders discussed Israel's plans to take over the remaining Hamas strongholds in Gaza with the goal of ending the war by freeing the remaining hostages and defeating Hamas. The remaining strongholds were identified by Netanyahu in a press conference on Sunday as being located in Gaza City and the central camps. Netanyahu further thanked Trump for his support of Israel since the beginning of the war. Netanyahu's plan for Gaza In his press conference, Netanyahu outlined the day-after plan for Gaza, which will include Israel maintaining overriding security responsibility and the establishment of a civilian administration. He did not elaborate on the role of the civilian administration or what Israel's security responsibilities would entail. These press conferences come amid Israeli and international criticism of the security cabinet's decision to approve a widened operation in Gaza City. Gaza will be demilitarized and a security zone will be established on Israel's border, the prime minister also said. Solve the daily Crossword
CNBC
3 hours ago
- CNBC
Judge orders Trump administration to restore part of UCLA's suspended funding
A U.S. judge on Tuesday ordered President Donald Trump's administration to restore a part of the federal grant funding that it recently suspended for the University of California, Los Angeles. U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco ruled that the grant funding suspensions violated an earlier June preliminary injunction where she ordered the National Science Foundation to restore dozens of grants that it had terminated at the University of California. That order had blocked the agency from cancelling other grants at the University of California system, of which UCLA is a part. "NSF's actions violate the Preliminary Injunction," Lin, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden, wrote. The White House and the university had no immediate comment on the ruling. UCLA said last week the government froze $584 million in funding. Trump has threatened to cut federal funds for universities over pro-Palestinian student protests against U.S. ally Israel's military assault on Gaza. It was not immediately clear how much of the frozen funding was the judge ordering to be restored. The University of California said last week it was reviewing a settlement offer by the Trump administration for UCLA in which the university will pay $1 billion. It said such a large payment would "devastate" the institution. The government alleges universities, including UCLA, allowed antisemitism during the protests. Protesters, including some Jewish groups, say the government wrongly equates their criticism of Israel's war in Gaza and its occupation of Palestinian territories with antisemitism, and their advocacy for Palestinian rights with support for extremism. Experts have raised free speech and academic freedom concerns over the Republican president's threats. Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom called the Trump administration's settlement offer a form of extortion. Large demonstrations took place at UCLA last year. Last month, UCLA agreed to pay over $6 million to settle a lawsuit alleging antisemitism. It was also sued this year over a 2024 violent mob attack on pro-Palestinian protesters. Rights advocates note a rise in antisemitism, anti-Arab bias and Islamophobia due to conflict in the Middle East. The Trump administration has not announced equivalent probes into Islamophobia. The government has settled its probes with Columbia University, which agreed to pay over $220 million, and Brown University, which said it will pay $50 million. Both accepted certain government demands. Settlement talks with Harvard University are ongoing.
4 hours ago
State Department rolls out scaled-back Human Rights Report
The State Department is out Monday with its long-delayed annual Human Rights Report, and this year's edition looks much different than previous installations. The report, an annual U.S. government account of human rights conditions in countries around the globe, typically comes out in February or March. A senior State Department official explained that the later release date was due to the transition of power from the Biden administration to the Trump administration. "The new State Department came in and we had a draft version of a Human Rights Report that prioritize things the prior administration had focused on and that the American people rejected," the official said. "And so that process of revising and ensuring that the report is readable and is factually based took several months." Department officials acknowledge that the report, which covers the year 2024, has been pared down -- with countries' reports cut by dozens of pages in many cases. "This year's reports were streamlined for better utility and accessibility in the field and by partners," an appendix to the document reads. "We minimize the amount of statistical data in the report. In the age of the internet, the underlying data are generally available." But critics of the Trump administration are likely to argue that in some cases, the brevity -- along with other findings -- are political decisions. "This year's reports are different. The administration has erased or watered down entire categories of abuse," the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, a coalition of former State Department officials opposed to the Trump administration's foreign assistance cuts and many of its other policies, said in a statement. "This is not an oversight; it is deliberate erasure," the group added. Here's a breakdown covering some of the countries of note: Israel, the West Bank and Gaza The section of the 2024 report covering Israel, the West Bank and Gaza is notably brief, making several statements about the treatment of hostages held captive by Hamas while saying very little about the humanitarian conditions faced by Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The report states that the conflict following Hamas' attack on October 2023 attack on Israel, which killed 1,195 people, "led to a rise in reports of human rights violations," including claims of "arbitrary or unlawful killings; enforced disappearance; degrading treatment by government officials; and arbitrary arrest or detention." The Israel-Hamas War has resulted in significant casualties. The death toll in Gaza since the war began is more than 61,500, and another roughly 153,500 people have been injured, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. The State Department also said the Israeli government "took several credible steps to identify officials who committed human rights abuses, with multiple trials pending at year's end." Although Israel's military actions in Gaza have been widely criticized, the subheading of the report titled "War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity, and Evidence of Acts that May Constitute Genocide, or Conflict-related Abuses," the department focused only on Hamas and Hezbollah -- writing that the designated terror groups "continue to engage in the indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians in violation of the law of armed conflict." The State Department's 2023 report covered only about three months of the war between Israel and Hamas, but listed concerns about "serious abuses in a conflict by Hamas and Israel, including unlawful or widespread civilian deaths and harm." It noted that at the end of that year, Israel's "sustained, wide-scale military operation in Gaza" launched in response to Hamas' attack "had killed more than 21,000 Palestinians and injured more than 56,000 by the end of the year, displaced the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza, and resulted in a severe humanitarian crisis." The 2023 report on Israel, the West Bank and Gaza is 76 pages long and more than 22,000 words. The 2024 version is eight pages and less than 1,500 words. Russia and Ukraine As previous reports have done, this year's Human Rights Report sharply criticizes Russia over its brutal invasion of Ukraine. "There were credible reports of summary execution, torture, rape, and attacks killing and injuring civilians and damaging or destroying civilian infrastructure by Russia's forces in Ukraine. Russia's forces and officials committed crimes against humanity, including but not limited to deporting thousands of civilians to Russia, including children," the report reads. But this time, the State Department was also harsher in its evaluation of Ukraine, mirroring President Donald Trump's tendency to criticize both sides of the conflicts. "Significant human rights issues involving Ukrainian government officials included credible reports of: torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; arbitrary arrest or detention; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom, including violence or threats of violence against journalists, unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists, and censorship; systematic restrictions on workers' freedom of association; and the significant presence of any of the worst forms of child labor," it says. The State Department's 2023 report listed many of the same issues regarding Ukraine. However, it noted then that they were "not comparable to the scope of Russia's abuses" -- a line not included in the 2024 version. El Salvador El Salvador -- a favorite of the Trump administration -- received a glowing review this year. The 2024 report found "there were no credible reports of significant human rights abuses." "Reports of gang violence remained at a historic low under the state of exception as mass arrests suppressed gang activity," the report reads. In 2023, it was a different story. That report found that "arbitrary arrests and mass pretrial hearings" had "undermined due process and exacerbated historically difficult conditions in overcrowded prisons." France, Germany and other European allies The 2024 report found that the human rights landscape in several traditional Western ally nations had "worsened through the year." "Significant human rights issues included restrictions on freedom of expression and credible reports of crimes, violence, or threats of violence motivated by antisemitism," the State Department said of Germany. It included similar language in its reports covering France and the United Kingdom. "Manifestations of antisemitism, including physical and verbal attacks, occurred at public demonstrations, sporting and social events, in schools, in the street, in certain media outlets, and online," the department said regarding Germany. "Apart from antisemitic speech, desecration of cemeteries and Holocaust monuments represented the most widespread antisemitic acts, although there was a rising number of physical assaults on individuals perceived to be Jewish," it added. The department's 2023 report noted concerns about antisemitism in France, Germany and the U.K., but found that there "were no significant changes in the human rights situation" in the countries through the course of the year.
