The courage of young speakers during this commencement season has been inspiring—and the backlash discouraging. A bold, young class president at MIT, Megha Vemuri, last Thursday in a speech lauded her fellow students for supporting Palestine and condemned the university’s ties with “the genocidal Israeli military.” She was banned from the next day’s commencement ceremony.

Another self-admittedly nervous commencement speaker at New York University, senior Logan Rozos, bemoaned “atrocities currently happening in Palestine” and was denied his diploma.  

At George Washington University, senior Cecilia Culver told an audience she was “ashamed to know my tuition is being used to fund this genocide” in Gaza and was barred from campus. Like their predecessors acting against the Vietnam War, for Civil Rights, for Black Lives Matter, and for women’s rights, these students are on the right side of history.   

We had a different kind of demonstration at Emerson: a demonstration of the suppression of free speech. Students were repeatedly scolded and threatened by the administration before commencement not to engage in any sign of protest, and for the most part, they complied. One student who displayed a Palestinian flag was promptly escorted by security straight from the stage out of the arena and deposited on the street.  For that offense, the student was banned from the college for 10 years and denied any alumni benefits—a thin-skinned Trumpian response. 

Only the students’ “Mosaic Ceremony” slipped under the administration’s anti-speech radar. This event, held at the Paramount Center on May 7, 2025, saw a small but joyful crowd of BIPOC, LGBTQ+,  and other students cheer on former Boston Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola’s powerful criticism of the slaughter in Gaza. President Jay Bernhardt did not attend. 

At the main commencement, there was a subtle sign, though, of the mood of this once-liberal college. Bernhardt seemed to shrink at the very end of the receiving line, this being the second year he has forsaken the traditional role of handing out diplomas in order to avoid contact with students. He stood there with a personal bodyguard steps away on the stage.  About half the graduating students snubbed him, turning away without a handshake as they passed after getting their diplomas.

To see what a change this represents at Emerson, scroll through the 2019 commencement ceremony. Toward the end, the then-president of the college stood grinning as he passed out diplomas and students pumped his hand, before giving an eloquent tribute to an alum who had been shot and persevered.

Is the current administration—headed by a president who cowers from students, is shunned by graduates, protected by a bodyguard, and presumably thrilled that his punishment crackdown succeeded in keeping students from speaking their principles—what we want? 

 Doug Struck

 Senior Journalist-in-Residence