The MIT barred Megha Vemuri from attending the undergraduate ceremony after she delivered an unapproved pro-Palestinian speech during a university event.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) barred Megha Vemuri, the 2025 class president, from attending its main undergraduate commencement ceremony on Friday after she delivered an unapproved pro-Palestinian speech during a university event the previous day, NBC News reported.
According to the report, the university cited procedural violations and disruption of a formal event as reasons for its decision.
Pro-Palestinian Speech Sparks Controversy
Vemuri, a double major in computation and cognition and linguistics, addressed the OneMIT Commencement Ceremony on Thursday wearing a Keffiyeh scarf, the report said. She accused MIT of complicity in what she described as a “genocide” in Gaza due to its “research ties with the Israeli military”.
“MIT is aiding and abetting [Israel] with its assault on the Palestinian people,” Vemuri said in her speech, which was met with cheers from classmates, some of whom waved Palestinian flags, per NBC News.
“Right now, while we prepare to graduate and move forward with our lives, there are no universities left in Gaza. 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.”
She referenced a recent student vote urging the university to sever research ties with Israeli institutions and decried the backlash students faced for supporting Palestine: “You prevailed because the MIT community that I know would never tolerate a genocide.”
Between 2020 and 2024, MIT reportedly received about $2.8 million in grants, gifts, and contracts from Israeli institutions, according to U.S. Department of Education data cited by The Boston Globe.
MIT Responds With Ban from Ceremony
MIT confirmed the disciplinary action in a statement Friday, saying that the speech Vemuri gave was not the one approved in advance.
“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,” NBC News quoted university spokesperson Kimberly Allen as saying. “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.”
‘A Massive Overstep,’ Says Vemuri
Speaking to the media after being banned from the main ceremony, Vemuri described MIT’s action as “a massive overstep” and said she had been punished “without merit or due process.” Her diploma will still be issued, according to her father, Sarat Vemuri, who spoke to The New York Times.
“I see no need for me to walk across the stage of an institution that is complicit in this genocide,” Vemuri said, according to NYT.
According to NBC News, she urged fellow graduates through her speech to symbolically turn their class rings, which feature MIT’s beaver mascot, “so the beaver is no longer facing you, it is now facing the world… the same name that is directly complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.”
MIT President Emphasizes Scientific Thinking
MIT President Sally Kornbluth, who spoke immediately after Vemuri on Thursday, made no direct reference to the speech or the incident, and instead emphasized the importance of rational thinking and academic freedom.
“At MIT, we believe in freedom of expression. But today is about the graduates,” Kornbluth said, briefly pausing as chants from some audience members echoed through the venue, NYT reported.
In her official address Friday, Kornbluth encouraged graduates to become “ambassadors for the way we think and work and thrive at MIT.”
Campus Tensions on Palestine
Vemuri’s case is not isolated. Earlier this month, New York University withheld the diploma of student Logan Rozos after he delivered an unapproved commencement speech denouncing “the atrocities currently happening in Palestine,” as reported by NYT.
NYU called Rozos’ address an expression of “his personal and one-sided political views.”
These incidents come amid growing global scrutiny of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which began after the October 7 Hamas attack that reportedly killed about 1,200 people in Israel. In response, Israel’s ongoing operations in Gaza have killed over 52,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities.
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