Students at MIT walked out of the university's commencement ceremonies after the class president accused Israel of participating in a "genocide" of Palestinians in Gaza and accused her school of being complicit in the supposed "genocide."
On Thursday, after the president of the Class of 2025, Megha M. Vemuri, gave her commencement speech, there were a number of boos as well as cheers when she praised other students for protesting against Israel's war in Gaza against Hamas, sparked by the October 7 terrorist attack of 2023.
“You have faced the obstacle of fear before, and you turned it into fuel to stand up for what is right — you showed the world that MIT wants a free Palestine,” she told her classmates as some graduates stood up, waving the Palestinian flag, video of the speech showed.
"Last spring, MIT’s undergraduate body and graduate student union voted overwhelmingly to cut ties with the genocidal Israeli military. You called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. And you stood in solidarity with the pro-Palestine activists on campus,” Vemuri added. “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."
As she continued her speech, wearing a red keffiyeh, the class president was received with chants of "shame" from the audience while others cheered her display of leftist activism on behalf of the Palestinians.
“We are watching Israel try to wipe Palestine off the face of the earth, and it is a shame that MIT is a part of it,” she claimed, and pushed for others to pressure MIT to cut any ties with Israel. She went on to claim that MIT is “directly complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.”
After her speech, because of the backlash she received, Vemuri was barred from attending the undergraduate ceremony. She had veered from the speech she originally submitted to the school, an MIT spokesperson told Fox News.
"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,” the school said.
