YIR: Universities Struggle with Graduation Protests

In June, several major universities around the country still had to contend with violent protests against Israel and the war in Gaza.

At Stanford University, which had scheduled its graduation ceremonies for June 16, police were called in on June 5, the last day of spring classes, to clear pro-Palestinian demonstrators who barricaded themselves in the university president’s office.

Thirteen demonstrators were arrested after they broke into the office and caused what the university described as “extensive graffiti vandalism on the sandstone buildings and columns of the Main Quad” that included “vile and hateful sentiments that we condemn in the strongest terms.”

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The university indicated that all of the students who were arrested were being suspended and those who were scheduled to graduate this month would not be allowed to do so.

Emory University also had to take action in late April against protesters who set up tents on the university’s quadrangle as preparations were beginning there for commencement. Emory President Gregory Fenves had campus police call in officers from the Georgia State Patrol and the Atlanta Police department. Twenty-five demonstrators were arrested, some forcibly, by officers.

Across town at Morehouse College, the historically Black college had President Joe Biden as their commencement speaker. Several students there, some wearing keffiyehs, the traditional Palestinian scarves, turned their chairs and sat with their backs to the President as he spoke.

At Columbia University, where protests have been intense, the school in early May cancelled its main graduation ceremony opting for smaller ceremonies at individual colleges there.

At graduation exercises at Harvard, May 23, about 1,000 students walked out during the ceremony in protest against the decision by the Harvard Corporation, the school’s governing body, to bar 13 undergraduates who were arrested for protesting the war between Israel and Hamas.