USC cancels farewell speech after pro-Israel groups object
The University of Southern California said it has canceled plans for a graduation speech by this year’s top student, Asna Tabassum, who is Muslim. The school said the decision stemmed from security concerns based on emails and other electronic communications warning of a plan to disrupt the graduation ceremony, including at least one targeting Ms. Tabassum.
“In recent days, the debate over the selection of our valedictorian has taken on an alarming tone,” said Andrew T. Guzman, the provost, who added that he made the final decision to select Ms. Tabassum. “The intensity of sentiment, fueled by both social media and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, has grown to include many voices outside USC and has escalated to the point where there were significant initial risks of security and disruption.”
But the university declined Tuesday to provide details about where the communications came from or whether it was under criminal investigation. And her decision followed complaints about Ms. Tabassum’s selection by two pro-Israel groups on campus that cited her support for Palestinians on social media.
Ms. Tabassum, a biomedical engineering student who identified herself as a first-generation American of South Asian descent, could not be reached for comment. But in one rackshe criticized the decision.
“I am appalled by this decision and deeply disappointed that the university is being subdued by a hate campaign designed to silence my voice,” Ms. Tabassum wrote, adding, “Serious questions remain about whether USC’s decision to rescind my invitation to speak was made solely on the basis of safety.”
Also the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an Islamic civil rights organization convicted the decision to cancel the speech as “cowardly” and demanded that USC reverse it.
Graduation speeches could be the next bone of contention in the free speech debate that has engulfed many universities since the war between Israel and Hamas began. University administrators have faced raucous debates over pro-Palestinian student protests, which many Jewish students and alumni say often veer toward anti-Semitism. Protesters say the backlash is an attempt to censor their political beliefs.
But Dr. Guzman acknowledged that the decision to cancel the speech was against the university’s tradition, but said: “To be clear, this decision has nothing to do with freedom of expression. There is no right to free speech to speak at the outset.”
Erroll Southers, who oversees security at USC, said in an interview that the decision followed a barrage of communications threatening upcoming graduation ceremonies.
“No one could ever remember that these kinds of complaints came to us,” says Dr. Southers, associate senior vice president for safety and hazard insurance. ‘They had identified our valedictorian. They were important in terms of the specificity of the person, the event, that is, our beginning, and their intention to disrupt our beginning.”
Dr. Southers said it had not yet been decided whether Ms. Tabassum would be allowed to sit on stage during the ceremonies.
USC announced on April 5 that Ms. Tabassum, a native of Chino Hills, California, would be the top student of 2024. She was selected from more than 200 students who met the academic qualification: an average grade point average of at least 3.98. From that group, a selection committee of faculty members reviewed more than 100 candidates.
The announcement of Ms. Tabassum’s selection noted her volunteer work with nonprofit organizations in the Los Angeles area, including a mobile blood pressure clinic that visits homeless shelters and a group she co-founded that distributes medical supplies to areas in need across the country. whole world.
Shortly after the announcement, a campus group called Trojans for Israel issued a statement a statement She said Ms. Tabassum “openly peddles anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric.” It cited her social media biography with a link to a page that calls Zionism a “racist settler-colonial ideology.” A similar complaint came from the campus chapter of Chabad. The organizations urged the university to reconsider the selection of Ms. Tabassum.
Anuj Desai, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison law school, suggested that Ms. Tabassum might have legal grounds to file a lawsuit, especially in light of California law that supports students’ First Amendment rights.
“If the reason they’re removing her is because of her views, then that feels much more like a free speech issue,” he said. “Normally we would say: increase security.”
But Mr Desai said the university could suspend her speech if it found out that Ms Tabassum planned to use the address as a forum, as graduation speakers sometimes do, to discuss their outrage over current issues.
“They could rightly say that we don’t want to talk about the Middle East – we’re not pro-Palestinian and we’re not pro-Israel,” he said.
In a similarly controversial decision, the City University of New York law school suspended a tradition in which students choose their graduation speaker. That decision, first reported by The Forward, followed last year’s decision speechwhen Fatima Mousa Mohammed, a law graduate of Yemeni descent, attacked New York City police and called on her classmates to fight against “capitalism, racism, imperialism and Zionism.”
The CUNY Board of Trustees called the comments “hate speechand Hunter College to assure about a plan to hold CUNY Law’s 2024 graduation ceremony on the Hunter campus in May. Instead, the law school has announced that the ceremony will take place at the Apollo Theater.
