{"id":42126,"date":"2025-06-23T12:12:41","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T19:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=42126"},"modified":"2025-06-23T12:12:42","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T19:12:42","slug":"a-harvard-commencement-speaker-mentioned-gaza-the-school-refused-to-publish-her-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/06\/23\/a-harvard-commencement-speaker-mentioned-gaza-the-school-refused-to-publish-her-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"A HARVARD COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER MENTIONED GAZA. THE SCHOOL REFUSED TO PUBLISH HER SPEECH."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Divinity School insiders said Harvard\u2019s practices are at odds with the public perception that the university is fighting Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Akela Lacy<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

June 20 2025 (TheIntercept.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Banners<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Harvard University\u2019s campus in Cambridge, Mass., on May 27, 2025. Photo: Sophie Park\/Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL<\/strong> broke precedent by refusing to publish a video of its commencement speech after a speaker went off-script to call attention to the perilous conditions in Gaza, The Intercept has learned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are no safe zones left in Gaza after 600 days and 77 years of genocide,\u201d said Zehra Imam, who graduated from the Harvard Divinity School and participated in the embattled Religion and Public Life program. Imam, who is Muslim, was speaking with two other students from Christian and Jewish faiths who had cleared a draft of their planned remarks with the school \u2014 and agreed that Imam should go off-script to address the ongoing genocide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI center Palestine today, not just because of its scale of atrocity but because of our complicity in it,\u201d Imam said. \u201cClass of 2025, Palestine is waiting for you to arrive. And you must be courageous enough to rise to the call because Palestine will keep showing up in your living rooms until you are ready to meet its gaze.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harvard did not publish a video of the speech on its website or YouTube page<\/a>, as it did with commencement speeches in past years<\/a>. When Imam and her co-speakers asked why, the school told them the decision was made due to \u201csecurity concerns.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The decision runs counter to the public perception that Harvard is crusading against President Donald Trump\u2019s threats to cut university funding to crush speech, according to seven Harvard Divinity School students and staff who spoke to The Intercept. While the university has been publicly praised for fighting back against Trump, its efforts to censor Imam\u2019s speech and wipe out the civic engagement she took part in\u00a0<\/strong>have raised concerns among students and staff that the school is\u00a0actually capitulating to pressure<\/a>\u00a0from the White House.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The school made a password-protected version of the speech temporarily available to people with a Harvard login, a Harvard spokesperson confirmed to The Intercept. But choosing not to release it publicly \u201cfeels to a lot of students suspicious and just contradictory,\u201d said Perlei Toor, a second-year divinity school student. \u201cThat\u2019s not what happened last year or the year before that.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behind the scenes, the school has been quietly dismantling<\/a> the Religion and Public Life program in which Imam participated. Until recently with an initiative led by the Divinity School\u2019s only Palestinian staff member, the program has drawn Trump\u2019s ire \u2014 and criticism from some alumni<\/a>, campus leaders<\/a>, and students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imam ended her portion of the speech with a poem from a student in Gaza \u2014 one of several refugees to whom she offers poetry lessons via an organization<\/a> she founded connecting U.S. students with students in refugee camps. She and her co-speakers received a standing ovation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had a dream \/ I went back home \/ slept in my bed \/ felt warmth again,\u201d she read. \u201cI had a dream \/ My eyes forgot the blood, the loss, the patience \u2026 My nose forgot the smoke smell, the deaths, the corpse rotten \u2026 My body skipped what I had lived.\u201d

Read Our Complete CoverageIsrael\u2019s War on Gaza<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE SUPPRESSION OF<\/strong> Imam\u2019s speech capped off a chaotic year for the Divinity School\u2019s Religion and Public Life program. As of last month, Harvard had pushed out the program\u2019s three leaders<\/a>, canceled a class, suspended one of its initiatives, and cut most of its staff<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The program itself is still relatively new: Harvard launched Religion and Public Life in late 2020, following worldwide protests against police brutality to focus on<\/a> \u201ceducating leaders to understand the civic consequences of religion, in service of building a just world at peace.\u201d During a time of uncertainty, the program would \u201cshape our character and trajectory both in the years to come as well as in our tumultuous present.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the October 7 attacks, the program\u2019s troubled trajectory began to take shape. Program leaders, faculty, and staff sent a newsletter<\/a> urging affiliates of the Divinity School to \u201cchallenge single story narratives\u201d that justified retaliation against Palestinians. Harvard Divinity School Dean David F. Holland disavowed the statement, as the Harvard Crimson reported, saying it did not represent the school<\/a> and described it as \u201cunproductive.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following year, the group Students Against Antisemitism sued Harvard over claims that the school had failed to stop antisemitism on campus. The suit\u00a0criticized the Religion and Public Life program<\/a>\u00a0for hosting a screening of the film \u201cIsraelism<\/a>,\u201d which documents changing Jewish attitudes toward Israel, and took aim at the program\u2019s flagship course, which took students on a trip to Israel and the West Bank. Harvard agreed to a\u00a0confidential settlement<\/a>\u00a0in the suit last month.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Last May, the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance released a report<\/a> on campus antisemitism that took further aim at the letter program faculty sent after the October 7 attacks. It also criticized the program\u2019s Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative, which ran the flagship course and examines how religion can promote peace in situations of violent conflict and mass displacement. The initiative, the report claims, \u201cappears to focus entirely on the Palestinians<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Toor, the second-year student, this framing is emblematic of misconceptions about the Religion and Public Life program. News stories and discourse about the program often miss \u201cjust how much Religion and Public Life does besides Palestine and Israel,\u201d she told The Intercept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The program provides opportunities for students to connect religious studies to the public sphere through tracks in government, journalism, and humanitarian aid, among other topics, and to take on related internships. It also plans more than half of the school\u2019s programming and events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Late last year, facing political pressure and security concerns, program leaders decided not to take students on the trip to Israel and the West Bank or offer the flagship course this spring. Shortly after, the departures of several program leaders were announced. In January, Assistant Dean Diane Moore, who built the program and taught the course, retired<\/a> early. The next day, Assistant Dean Hussein Rashid announced he would leave the program at the end of the academic year because of what he described as the school\u2019s anti-Muslim bias and a \u201chostile environment to Muslims and Arabs.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moore did not respond to a request for comment. Rashid declined to comment on the record. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Toor, the program has been a necessary home for people of all faiths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause of the diversity of the staff and because of the range of topics that students were able to explore,\u201d Toor said, \u201cespecially since the inauguration of Trump, [the program] has been a real space of ministerial comfort.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in April, Harvard\u2019s much-anticipated report<\/a> on antisemitism presented a narrative closer to the one from the Jewish Alumni Alliance. Released <\/strong>just <\/strong>after <\/strong>the school said it would not comply<\/a> with a letter<\/a> with Trump\u2019s demands, the April report was a result of the efforts of Trump\u2019s antisemitism task force. The school had just pushed out<\/a> leaders of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies and ended<\/a> its partnership with Birzeit University in the West Bank. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new report identified the Religion and Public Life program as one of several offenders that contributed to the \u201cfrequency and intensity of treatment of Israel as an oppressor state and the Palestinians as an oppressed people in courses and public events throughout the campus.\u201d This, according to the report, was \u201cindicative of institutional bias and hostility.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201dWhile the program was publicly launched with what seemed like a broad mandate to explore the intersection of religion and various aspects of public life, in practice, it focused heavily on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, presenting a perspective widely perceived as consistently anti-Israeli and aligned very narrowly with a strand of pro-Palestinian politics,\u201d the report read. \u201cThis narrow focus on this exceptionally polarizing topic appears to have stemmed from the decision, made soon after RPL\u2019s founding, to center its programming around a multi-year case study on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The program focuses on a wide range of topics like the economy, democracy and voting rights, education, and humanitarian aid, said Toor. Topics related to Israel and Palestine are a fraction of the work it does on campus.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The program continued to shrink, this time with cuts. Shortly after the report was published, the school began notifying staff and other program leaders that their contracts would not be renewed<\/a> due to budget cuts. (Harvard had cut the program\u2019s only Israeli professor<\/a> the previous spring.) The school also announced it was pausin<\/a>g the program\u2019s Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the staff cut was Hilary Rantisi, the conflict and peace initiative\u2019s Palestinian American associate director who co-taught the flagship course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey terminated the only Palestinian employee that they had,\u201d said Preston Iha, a first-year student in the Masters of Divinity program. \u201cWhich is, again, signaling and makes people wonder who is really welcome at a school that claims to welcome everybody.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last month, the day after the commencement, the school notified program staff about additional cuts. Four staff members\u2019 jobs were eliminated, and a fifth staffer was given a three-month extension of their contract, which is set to end June 30. A new program director, Terrence L. Johnson, will take over at the end of June \u2014 but students and staff told The Intercept it\u2019s not clear what the program will consist of after its staff was gutted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt seems like, yes, there could be budget cuts,\u201d said Toor. \u201cBut for you to target one program so specifically, and for that program to also be heavily mentioned in the antisemitism report and the Islamophobia report, it seems like too much of a coincidence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CONTACT THE AUTHOR:<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Akela Lacy<\/a>akela.lacy@theintercept.com<\/a>@akela_lacy<\/a>on X<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Divinity School insiders said Harvard\u2019s practices are at odds with the public perception that the university is fighting Trump. Akela Lacy June 20 2025 (TheIntercept.com) Harvard University\u2019s campus in Cambridge, Mass., on May 27, 2025. Photo: Sophie Park\/Bloomberg via Getty Images HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL broke precedent by refusing to publish a video… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42127,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42126\/revisions\/42127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}