Is Cracking Down on Political Protest at Graduation a Violation or a Necessity?

How far is too far at a university graduation? At my graduation from the University of Chicago Divinity School in May 2024, amidst a downpour of punishing proportions, pro-Palestinian students booed President Paul Alivisatos, engaged in call and response chants in the middle of speeches, and then, to my relief, walked out en masse. These students, including nearly every student from the school of social work, wore distinct identifiers to mark themselves as pro-Palestinians: scarves with the Palestinian flag embroidered on them, keffiyehs, shawls with hand-painted slogans, pins–I saw everything short of fresh tattoos, though I do not doubt that some also sported those. The flags and signs they brought into the graduation complemented these markers and were brandished aggressively during the chants and boos.

Though my experience certainly felt visceral, it was far from unique: that year, many graduation ceremonies across the country were disrupted, including at my other alma mater, Northwestern University, and other commencement ceremonies, most prominently at the University of Southern California and Columbia University, were canceled entirely. This came as a great disappointment to many of the graduating students, who had missed their high school graduation due to COVID-19.

Seen in this light, the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) comes off as shrill—perhaps even a bit absurd—for condemning CUNY Brooklyn College, CUNY John Jay College, and Barclays Center security for “the discriminatory targeting, search and seizure of Palestinian symbols during colleges’ commencement ceremonies.”

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For one, even if their allegations that “visibly Arab Muslim students were singled out” for “unwarranted search and seizures of personal property,” the video posted with the publicity statement shows only a peaceful transfer of a flag from one visibly Arab student to a security guard, and the slight glance into the gown of, not a visibly Arab Muslim student, but an African American student. The shaking down of students and their family members that the statement alleges, though it may have occurred, is not evidenced by the video.

@anadoluagency 🪧 Pro-Palestinian protest denouncing Israel’s actions in Gaza took place outside the City University of New York’s graduation ceremony at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center ⤵️ #usa #israel #gaza #anadolu #anadoluagency ♬ Anadolu English – orijinal ses – Anadolu English

Instead, the bulk of the video shows a pro-Palestinian student speaking out against the university as “complicit” in “the genocide in Gaza” and saying, “there is no graduation in Gaza, so how can I graduate”? This tendency to conceive of Gaza as a place in which there has not been a consistent perpetuation of terrorism against Israel for nearly half a century allows for such selective blindness as this–which carries the implicit argument that Israel, through its “genocide,” is preventing normalization of the territories, when in reality the culprit remains Hamas now, and was the Palestinian Islamic Jihad previously.

The rest of the video attempts to lend credence to the idea that anti-Semitism is not anti-Zionism by interviewing Dovid Feldman, the spokesperson for Neturei Karta, a group that describes itself as an international ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist organization. Though Feldman appears as an innocent attendee at the CUNY graduation, he and his organization actually seek out opportunities such as these to shift the narrative, confusing non-Jews and Jews unfamiliar with their own community into believing that he is a legitimate representative of the ultra-orthodox perspective or that his views on Israel reflect those of other Jews.

Nothing could be further from the truth, however.

Feldman, and the rest of Neturei Karta, believe that the messiah will only come through divine intervention, something that cannot happen if there is a state of Israel because the Jews’ taking of the land must be fully divine. They, therefore, assume a vehemently anti-Zionist stance and take every opportunity they can to publicly oppose the state of Israel and sway public opinion toward their viewpoint. Even though they typically play up their Judaism to accomplish this, they are considered at most an extreme fringe sect of Judaism, their views not at all reflecting those of most Jews, and at least they could be seen as turncoats, betraying Judaism by consorting with Holocaust deniers because they share the same views on Israel.

It might have been ignorance that allowed Feldman to appear in CAIR-NY’s video, but it is nevertheless telling that the vast majority of the video concerned airing a platform rather than documenting any acts of discrimination. Perhaps a greater understanding of the challenge CUNY must have been facing can be derived from a perusal of a video of pro-Palestine protesters disrupting the City College of New York graduation, where they march and yell slogans loudly through the quad with huge Palestinian flags and signs, continuing to yell even as the CCNY security put them in handcuffs.

Or what about the demonstration at Columbia and Barnard at the gates outside Columbia’s commencement ceremony, where protesters burned and ripped their own diplomas? It isn’t hard to see why CUNY would be wary about permitting Palestinian iconography at graduation when pro-Palestinian students at the CCNY campus had tried to set up another encampment barely a month before.

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It is not that the “tradition of cultural pride and solidarity” of “peacefully carry[ing] Palestinian flags across the [graduation] stage” should not be something to be upheld, even encouraged. It is just that such a tradition does not exist. In many cases, too many cases not to be deemed a pattern, having Palestinian flags and other Palestinian iconography has meant disruption, and a shifting of the focus from the university, and from the graduates and their accomplishments to a particular political struggle that many students at these schools would rather stay away from. This “tradition” is not of peaceful protest; it is of taking advantage of graduation as a platform in a way that does not reflect the aims of the graduation ritual, which is to honor the students,  honor the professors who taught them, and to honor the legacy of the school.

The fact that CAIR-NY used their press release video as a platform to promote their agenda reinforces the fact that the pro-Palestinian movement cares more about winning a PR battle than it does about the students on college campuses. Free speech and free expression do not supersede student safety or even the ability to have a graduation ceremony proceed in an orderly fashion.

In the future, CAIR-NY would do well to consider this before leveling accusations against public universities of New York, institutions that do more good for students who need it than CAIR ever will.

Image by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash