Metro Atlanta student banned from MIT graduation ceremony after Palestine comments
A metro Atlanta student, set to speak at her university’s degree ceremony, was forced to sit it out.
The decision came after she made comments in support of Palestine a day earlier.
“You showed the world that MIT wanted a free Palestine,” said Megha Vemuri while speaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology commencement ceremony last Thursday as the class president. It is where she made comments about not just Palestine, but also criticized the university.
“You stood in solidarity with the pro-Palestinian activists on campus, you faced threats, intimidation, and suppression coming from especially your own university officials,” added Vemuri, who is an Alpharetta High School alum.
After her speech, MIT decided that Vemuri, who had a role in an undergraduate degree ceremony the next day, couldn’t attend.
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The speech wasn’t the one Vemuri provided to officials beforehand. The university said in a statement, in part, “the individual deliberately and repeatedly misleading commencement organizers and leading a protest from the stage, disrupting an important Institute ceremony.”
“I stand by and agree with MIT in what their decision happened to be,” Rabbi Larry Sernovitz of the Hillels of Georgia told Channel 2’s Candace McCowan.
Sernovitz works with college students, and said this wasn’t the time or place for the comments.
“Universities have a duty not just to their students but to the United States to make sure students don’t feel intimidated, harassed, or oppressed on campus,” Sernovitz said. “You want to protest, that’s fine, but not at graduation. Give people the freedom to celebrate their academic achievements and not have to worry that when they sit there, excited and celebrating, they’re going to have to hear anti-Israel, anti-Jewish propaganda.”
While Vemuri wasn’t allowed at the degree ceremony, she did receive her degree. Channel 2 reached out to Vemuri, but didn’t hear back.
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