MIT class president is banned from graduation ceremony after jaw-dropping pro-Palestinian speech

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

The class president at Massachusetts Institute of Technology was banned from walking across the stage to receive her diploma after she gave a jaw-dropping anti-Israel speech.
Megha Vemuri was set to serve as the marshal of this year's graduation ceremony on Friday, but received an email earlier in the day that she could not attend the event, and her and her family were banned from campus for most of the day, the Boston Globe reports.
'You deliberately and repeatedly misled Commencement organizers,' MIT Chancellor Melissa Nobles wrote in the email.
'While we acknowledge your right to free expression, your decision to lead a protest from the stage, disrupting an important institute ceremony was a violation of MIT's time, place and manner rules for campus expression.'
The email came just one day after Vemuri veered from her prepared statements at the OneMIT commencement ceremony to instead call on the university to cut all ties with Israel.
'You have faced the obstacle of fear before and you turned it into fuel to stand up for wat is right,' she told her fellow graduates, university officials and even Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey - who was sitting in the audience.
'You showed the world that MIT wants a free Palestine,' Vemuri said of the widespread anti-Israel protests at the Cambridge campus.
'You called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and you stood in solidarity with the pro-Palestine activists on campus,' she continued.
'You faced threats, intimidation and suppression coming from all directions, especially your own university officials, but you prevailed because the MIT community that I know would never tolerate a genocide.'
Vemuri then concluded her speech by saying she and her fellow graduates will carry 'the stamp of the MIT name - the same name that is directly complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, so we carry with us the obligation to do everything we can to stop it.'
Data from the US Department of Education shows MIT reported receiving $2.8 million in grants, gifts and contracts from Israeli entities between 2020 and 2024, according to the Globe.
It is unclear, however, whether the funds came from individual, academic or government sources or how the money was spent.
But Vemuri's speech caused a stir, as video obtained by Fox News showed Jewish students walking out of the annual ceremony.
Some students and audience members could also be heard jeering, while others cheered and applauded Vemuri's remarks.
When University President Sally Kornbluth then took the podium to speak at the ceremony, she tried calming down the rhetoric.
'OK listen folks, at MIT we value freedom of expression, but today's about the graduates,' she began, as the cheers and shouts continued.
'There is a time and place to express yourselves and you will have many, many years to do it,' she continued.
'Let's talk about the graduates,' said Kornbluth - who previously had to testify before Congress about the school's alleged failure at protecting Jewish students.
She was then met with applause, and the ceremony continued as planned.
But the MIT Jewish Alumni Alliance suggested she did not go far enough, as it issued a statement criticizing the university leaders who 'failed to prevent a rogue student from taking over yesterday's graduation ceremony.'
The group said Vemuri 'took the opportunity to hijack the ceremony and to dedicate the entirety of her speech to berating and defaming Israel and promoting Hamas-inspired propaganda.
The MIT Jewish Alumni Alliance argued school officials should have done more 'to address or acknowledge what had transpired'
'One attendee who traveled from Israel with his family to receive his PhD diploma commented that his children were distraught over the speech and he needed to explain to them why a random person halfway across the world hates them,' the Jewish Alumni Alliance continued in their statement.
'This is not what a graduation ceremony is meant to be. A graduation ceremony is meant to honor its graduates and their accomplishments,' they argued.
House Speaker Mike Johnson even hit out at Vemuri for her remarks, which he called 'ignorant, hateful [and] morally bankrupt.
'Where is the shame - or appropriate response from the institution?' he wrote on X.
'Have your children avoid MIT and the Ivy League at all costs,' he added, apparently referring to the embattled Harvard University.
Yet others seemed to support Vemuri, with some even chanting at the ceremony on Friday 'Let Megha Walk.'
Emma Zhu, who graduated with a combined degree in computer science and economics, also told the Globe that she supported Vemuri's right to protest at graduation 'even if it is a bit inflammatory.
'At the end of the day, she should have the right to say her opinions and this is probably her biggest moment to be able to express what she feels to the world,' Zhu said.
In fact, Vemuri told the Globe ahead of the graduation festivities that she wanted to 'optimize my impact.'
'I'm nervous because I want to make the absolute most of this opportunity,' she said at the time. 'It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing... It's literally some of the greatest minds of our generation who are going to be listening to me, right?'
Still, a university spokesperson said that while the school 'supports free expression' it 'stands by its decision' to bar Vemuri from graduation, as the speech she gave 'was not the one that was provided by the speaker in advance.'
Vemuri, who grew up in Georgia, will still receive her degree, though, in computation and cognition and linguistics, according to the New York Times.
She now says she is not disappointed to miss the ceremony.
'I see no need to walk across the stage of an institution that is complicit in this genocide,' the graduate said.
But she added that she is 'disappointed' in the school's response, and claimed university officials 'massively overstepped their roles to punish me without merit or due process.'
She also told CNN she can 'handle the attention, positive and negative, if it means spreading the message further.'
Yet Vemuri is not the only university graduate this year to face backlash for anti-Israel remarks as President Donald Trump cracks down on schools that condoned the widespread protests amid the war in Gaza - and even cut funding to Harvard for what he claimed was a failure to protect Jewish students.
At New York University, officials withheld a diploma from Logan Rozos, who referred to 'the atrocities currently happening in Palestine' in his commencement speech.
At George Washington University in Washington DC, a graduate named Cecilia Culver also used her speech to urge others not to donate to the school and repeated requests for it to divest from companies that do.
The university similarly responded by barring her from campus and any further university-sponsored events, the Times reports.