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academic freedom
Attacks on ‘Political’ Graduation Speakers Are Craven Attacks on Intellectual Freedom
All students, faculty, and staff—and indeed all who care about public education—are threatened by the “The New Campus McCarthyism,” which continues to spread across the country and throughout the society at large.
May 20, 2025
Last week New York University announced that it was withholding the diploma of a graduating senior named Logan Rozos, and commencing disciplinary proceedings against him. His academic “crime?” As a featured graduation speaker, Rozos described the Israeli attacks on Gaza as “genocide” and expressed moral outrage that the attacks were supported by U.S. tax dollars and university investments.
These sentiments, of course, are not universally shared. They, predictably, provoked and offended those present who do not like it when Israel is criticized in this way. More importantly, their expression violates what is quickly becoming an 11th Commandment of Academic Life in the United States: Thou Shall Not Criticize Israel.
And so NYU official spokesperson John Beckman, a true inspiration to his increasingly craven profession, immediately vaulted into action to denounce the student and the speech:
NYU strongly denounces the choice by a student at the Gallatin School’s graduation today—one of over 20 school graduation ceremonies across our campus—to misuse his role as student speaker to express his personal and one-sided political views. He lied about the speech he was going to deliver and violated the commitment he made to comply with our rules. The university is withholding his diploma while we pursue disciplinary actions. NYU is deeply sorry that the audience was subjected to these remarks and that this moment was stolen by someone who abused a privilege that was conferred upon him.
Apparently, those who “lead” NYU believe that graduation speakers—typically selected because of their academic distinction or other exemplary accomplishments—should not express themselves honestly or say anything controversial, should clear their remarks with university censors in advance, and then say only things that will make everyone happy. To challenge an audience on a campus is thus forbidden. Most importantly, invited speakers must never violate the new 11th Commandment.
If this strikes you as anti-intellectual, censorious, and absurdly patronizing, consider the perhaps even more outrageous controversy surrounding Harvard’s 2024 Commencement Address, given by Maria Ressa, the winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for her courageous defense of press freedom, and civil liberties, in her native Philippines and in the world at large.
While this controversy unfolded at Harvard last year, it was brought to national attention only weeks ago, with the April 29 publication of Harvard’s Report of the Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias, which cited Ressa’s speech as an example of the “bias” that the report is charged with countering.
According to the report’s Executive Summary, “Ressa chose not to deliver prepared remarks that were meant to urge pro-Israel and pro-Palestine students to reconcile. Instead, she substituted new remarks praising the student protestors and delivered off-the cuff comments that appeared to echo traditional conspiracy theories about Jews, money, and power.” The authors then ask: “Why did a renowned humanitarian ad-lib seemingly antisemitic remarks against her Jewish critics at a highly scripted Harvard graduation ceremony?”
Every university that bends the knee to such efforts thereby undermines its own credibility as an institution of free intellectual inquiry, higher learning, and moral seriousness.
When I read these words, on page 12 of the 311-page report, I was shocked and in disbelief. For I have long admired Ressa, have followed her closely, and consider her 2022 book, How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future, to be one of the very best books I’ve read in recent years. The report’s question struck a chord. Maria Ressa is an antisemite? How can this be?
The first thing I did was search for her commencement speech to see for myself what offensive things she said. I quickly found both a transcript and a video, read the first and watched the second, and remained confused about the “seemingly antisemitic remarks.” The speech seemed fine to me; and as I watched it, I wished my own university were willing and able to invite such a fine person to give a commencement address.
Only then did I turn to the more elaborate explanation of the problem, on pages 116-17 of the report. Apparently Ressa had shared her prepared remarks in advance (with whom? does Harvard exercise prior restraint on its speakers?), but then deviated from these remarks in her speech, in two ways that troubled the report’s authors and thus merited commentary.
First, while in her prepared remarks she very generally alluded to the many different ways that she has been attacked on social media, in her speech she said this: “Because I accepted your invitation to be here today, I was attacked online and called antisemitic by power and money because they want power and money. While the other side was already attacking me because I had been on stage with Hillary Clinton. Hard to win, right?”
These, apparently, were the “off the cuff comments that appeared to echo traditional conspiracy theories about Jews, money, and power.”
What????
In the offending brief paragraph, Ressa clearly references attacks from both “sides” of the pro-Israel and pro-Palestine controversy. She says that those labeling her an antisemite—a scurrilous charge without a shred of evidence, I might add—have “power and money.” She does not say her attackers are Jews. She says they are rich and powerful. Because they are rich and powerful. The coverage of the event by the Texas Jewish Post—hardly an antisemitic publication—is instructive. After noting that billionaire “Bill Ackman [had] led a revolt of large donors,” the reporter offered this background:
Right-wing media and lawmakers had sought to paint Ressa as antisemitic prior to commencement, pointing to a Filipino-language editorial published in November in her media outlet, Rappler, calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, and to her signing of an open letter calling on Israel to protect journalists in Gaza. The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative site, claimed that the Rappler piece compared Israel to Hitler. That claim was amplified on the social network X by New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, who has gained attention for her combative questioning of university leaders, including Gay, at congressional hearings on campus antisemitism. “Harvard chose an antisemitic commencement speaker,” Stefanik wrote earlier this month, sharing a link to the Free Beacon article. “The university has failed to stand up for Jewish students at every turn, revealing the depths of its moral delinquency.”
Was it antisemitic for Ressa to say that “money and power” had denounced her? Hardly. Indeed, the report itself elsewhere comments on the efforts of at least three extremely wealthy donors—Ackman, Len Blavatnik, and Ken Griffin—to use promised donations to influence Harvard in the midst of its crisis, though it does not mention that Ackman himself had called Ressa “antisemitic” in a May 3 X post, three weeks before Ressa’s commencement address. Perhaps this is why the report claims that her “offending” words “appeared to echo” antisemitic tropes, and not that they did in fact echo them? For it is hard to see how alluding to a man who is rich, powerful, and censorious as rich, powerful, and censorious echoes antisemitic tropes.
Ressa’s second “offense”: She apparently omitted a brief section of her prepared remarks challenging keffiyah-wearing pro-Palestinian protesters (the report doesn’t say whether her prepared remarks also included a comment challenging pro-Israeli protesters, but it seems likely that it did and this too was omitted), and instead delivered add-libbed praise of “student speakers who had addressed the topic of Palestine.”
Here, again, are the offending words, worth quoting at length:
I loved the speeches of the students today. They were incredible. Because these times will hopefully teach you the same lesson I learned. You don’t know who you are until you’re tested, until you fight for what you believe in. Because that defines who you are.
But you’re Harvard. You better get your facts right, because now you are being tested. The chilling effect means that many are choosing to stay silent because there are consequences to speaking out.
I’m shocked at the fear and anger, the paranoia splitting open the major fracture lines of society, the inability to listen. What happened to us in the Philippines, it’s here.
The campus protests are testing everyone in America. Protests are healthy. They shouldn’t be violent. Protests give voice, they shouldn’t be silenced.
These words are evidence of “antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias”?
The report proceeds to devote an entire paragraph to the fact that Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi was offended by Ressa’s speech, “quietly requested clarification” of her on the stage, and then walked off stage when she did not respond (apparently, the clarification requested involved her retaking the microphone and revising the speech she had just finished giving to Zarchi’s specifications; are such requests for “clarification” by clergy a regular practice at Harvard commencements? It is one I have never experienced at the many commencements I’ve attended.)
The report’s account of commencement says nothing about the fact that Chabad Rabbi Zarchi was embroiled in controversy back on November 7, 2023, for giving a speech in which he seemed to call both Hamas terrorists and Hamas supporters not a “human” but “an animal... below an animal.” The precise intended reference and meaning of his words notwithstanding—the subject of much semantic discussion, they seem pretty nasty to me—in this speech and elsewhere he made very clear that Harvard’s Palestine Solidarity Committee was “antisemitic” and should be decertified by the university, with its protests banned from campus. (Note: Zarchi’s comment and his anti-PSC advocacy was noted earlier in the report, on p. 110; but its obvious connection to his defensive reaction to Ressa’s speech is never drawn.) That many Jewish leaders on campus disagree strongly with Zarchi—who has collaborated extensively with Bill Ackman’s crusade against Harvard, and who met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in July of 2024—was also unmentioned in this narrative.
Perhaps most important, the report says nothing about the fact that the overall frame of Ressa’s entire speech was the responsibility of all students to be their “best selves” and to work together, with compassion and understanding, to make the world a better place. To reduce that speech to the identity-obsessed concerns of its critics is to engage in exactly the kind of small-mindedness that the report elsewhere decries.
Obviously, the report is about much more than this one commencement episode, and should not be judged by its treatment this one episode. But what it says about Ressa’s Commencement Address is so strikingly tendentious and misleading, that you have to wonder how this account ever made its way into a report claiming to be so very academic and serious, and what this means for the other narratives recounted in the report.
Maria Ressa is a world-renowned journalist and human rights activist. While she has suffered persecution in her own country, and while she surely is hated and even targeted by authoritarians the world over, she is not likely to be materially harmed by the denunciations of Harvard’s Chabad rabbi or the displeasure of Harvard’s top donors and administrators.
But NYU’s Logan Rozos, and many others like him, experience severe repercussions for saying similar things. U.S. Representative Jared Moskowitz—a Democrat who has joined with Elise Stefanik and other Trumpists to attack so-called “antisemitism” on American campuses—was quite candid about Rozos: “He lied to the university... [and] everyone listening. There is no genocide going on in Israel... But at the end of the day, that’s up to the university whether they give him his diploma or not. You know, in fact, they can give him his diploma, it’s not going to matter. Good luck getting a job. That was a stupid, selfish thing, ruined the ceremony for a lot of families.”
The Trump administration’s efforts to deport Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, and many others who have spoken out for Palestinians and against Israel represent an even more serious form of intimidation and punishment for those who dare to violate the 11th Commandment. And make no mistake, while courts have recently ordered the release of many of these individuals pending resolution of their court cases, their cases are still being litigated, and the administration continues to pursue such deportations through every legal means available even as it pushes the boundaries of legality. In the first instance, it is foreign students and noncitizens more generally who are threatened by such efforts.
But in a broader sense, all students, faculty, and staff—and indeed all who care about public education—are threatened by the “The New Campus McCarthyism,” which continues to spread across the country and throughout the society at large.
This intellectual virus is not circulating randomly. As The New York Times recently reported, The Heritage Foundation has been busy at work planning and then putting into effect its “Project Esther,” designed, as the Times puts it, “to destroy pro-Palestinian activism in the United States.” While “Esther” is largely, though not exclusively, the work of right-wing evangelical Christian Zionists, it dovetails neatly with the post-October 7 efforts of the Anti-Defamation League to castigate all pro-Palestinian activism as “antisemitic” and to pressure campus leaders to crack down on such activity. Most importantly, these efforts have the full-throated backing of the Trump administration and its supporters in red states, like my own state of Indiana, all across the country.
Every university that bends the knee to such efforts thereby undermines its own credibility as an institution of free intellectual inquiry, higher learning, and moral seriousness, and contributes to the steady weakening of the freedom of expression and association that is at the heart of any decent, liberal democracy.
Such conduct is not academic leadership. It is craven submission to ideological small-mindedness and political pressure.
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A Graduation Message Amid the Trumpian Assault on Higher Education
Pick up the pieces and imagine the worlds of collective liberation that you have practiced building in classrooms where you worked across difference, where you learned to turn toward each other rather than away.
May 20, 2025
It is graduation season. Years of relentless work, of late nights spent studying for exams that beat like a drum on our most anxious fears, days bent over desks and keyboards trying to gather up words and put together logical arguments built on existing literature. The world was spinning so fast because these students were spinning it with their dedication, focus, and care. And now they are about to graduate—a huge accomplishment that represents, for many, a celebration of all whose sacrifice made these degrees possible.
I teach at John Jay College, part of the City University of New York system. At my college, the majority of students are first-generation college students—the first ones in their families to access higher education. This access required immense sacrifice from many ancestors, parents, siblings, grandparents. When they walk across that stage to receive their diploma, they are not alone. Each person walking across that stage is followed by a parade of ancestors who glow in this immense, powerful accomplishment that celebrates all of their legacies.
For many of my immigrant students, as well as for me, these sacrifices often look like fleeing homes and lands, letting go of the ability to fully express ourselves as we learn a new language, stumbling through years of trying to articulate the depth of our feelings and the texture of our experiences while trying on words that fit awkwardly in our mouths and on our bodies.
We need to do a better job, including the media, in naming this harrowing attack on higher education as an attack on freedom itself.
The City University of New York stands as a beacon against this darkness. Founded in 1847 as the nation's first free public institution of higher education, CUNY's core mission has always been providing first-rate education to all students, regardless of background or financial means. This beacon represents the best of what America can be—a place where education illuminates paths forward for all people, not just those born into privilege.
My students at John Jay College honor these sacrifices with their brilliance and vision. Their degrees aren't just pieces of paper—they are vessels of transformation, tools of liberation forged through years of intellectual courage. According to U.S. News and World Report, John Jay ranks No. 6 nationwide for social mobility (with 6 of the top 10 colleges in that category being City University of New York schools), with 85% of students graduating with zero college debt. These aren't just statistics; they represent real lives being remade, real futures expanding beyond what was once thought possible. In the classroom, in our meetings and research, I witness their world-building every day. They bring vast experience, curiosity, and wisdom from all corners of the world, analyzing problems and creating solutions with remarkable insight that can only come from minds that have been both challenged and nurtured by rigorous education.
This is why it breaks my heart to have conversations with students this semester unlike any I've had before—conversations filled with pain and confusion about their place in our shared reality. When they entered college, they believed they were doing the right thing for their families, communities, and our collective future. But the narrative around higher education has shifted dramatically under the Trump presidency, casting their decisions in a harsh new light—a deliberate attempt to extinguish the very flame of opportunity that has guided generations toward better lives.
This narrative shift is most evident in discussions around student loans. The administration has taken an aggressive stance against anyone with student loans, treating education as a moral failing rather than an investment. These policies represent a direct assault on the founding promise of institutions like CUNY—that education should illuminate paths forward for all people, not just those born into privilege. The light that these institutions have cast for generations is now being deliberately dimmed by those who see education as a commodity rather than a right. During the Biden era, programs like the SAVE plan eased the financial burden of education on middle and lower-income Americans, allowing many of us to meet our financial obligations while paying back our loans. This plan was specifically designed to address racial inequities in student debt, recognizing that Black borrowers typically owe 95% of their original debt even after 20 years, and that Latino borrowers face higher default rates. The SAVE plan was projected to make 85% of community college borrowers debt-free within 10 years—directly benefiting the diverse student populations at institutions like CUNY. Now, the rhetoric has changed dramatically.
"American taxpayers will no longer be forced to serve as collateral for irresponsible student loan policies," declares Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, while White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insists that "if you take out a loan, you have to pay it back. It's very simple." This simplistic framing attempts to divide us, painting those who sought education as enemies of those who didn't, when in reality, both groups often come from the same middle and working-class backgrounds. Education doesn't make anyone morally superior or inferior—yet this administration aims to create such divisions, further harming those who experience financial precarity.
Even beyond this damaging narrative, my students are entering a world of deep uncertainty. The positions they hoped for—research assistants at institutions, staff at nonprofits—have been decimated by budget cuts instigated by billionaire Elon Musk. Meanwhile, universities themselves are failing students in profound ways.
Our students deserve a government that sees their pursuit of education as admirable, not criminal. They deserve universities that protect them, not betray them.
Some institutions, like Columbia, have abandoned their responsibility to protect students, turning them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement with little concern for their welfare. In one harrowing account, ICE agents showed up at a Columbia student's apartment, demanding entry without a warrant. Ranjani Srinivasan avoided months—perhaps years—of unlawful detention only because her roommate knew their rights and refused to let agents in without proper documentation. Eventually, Ranjani left the country, her education and dreams interrupted by fear. And she is not alone—countless talented young people from around the world are now choosing not to come here because they cannot trust the United States with their visions and futures. They see the shadows of betrayal, and they're right to reconsider.
Other universities, like those in Ohio state, are dismantling critical programs and criminalizing certain perspectives, erasing entire histories from the classroom. These decisions are not representative of where the public is; for instance, in Ohio the bill banning diversity, equity, and inclusion concepts from the classroom was the most protested-against bill in Ohio history with roughly 1,500 people submitting statements in opposition to it passing and about 30 submitting statements in support. Academic freedom—what makes American universities powerful engines of transformation—is being systematically undermined, with universities complicit in this process. With the graduation season upon us, we are seeing the shape this complicity takes now. On May 14, New York University decided to withhold the diploma of their valedictorian for speaking truth to power—simply mentioning the atrocities taking place in Palestine. This act of courage is exactly what we should hope our students would do when witnessing injustice.
This attack on education is part of a broader assault on public institutions. When billionaires like Musk unravel our public services, they are revealing that this has nothing to do with government efficiency—instead, this too is about a fundamental attack on the infrastructure of democracy itself. This convergence of oligarchic wealth and authoritarian politics threatens not just our government services but our very capacity to exist as a democratic society. Our freedom to thrive—to access education, to expand our minds, to challenge ourselves, to grow beyond our circumstances—hangs in the balance as they attempt to dim the collective light we've worked generations to build.
We need to do a better job, including the media, in naming this harrowing attack on higher education as an attack on freedom itself. Education remains essential to democracy not just as a concept but as a lived practice. Public universities serve as beacons of social mobility in an increasingly unequal landscape. The pursuit of knowledge is not a crime but a fundamental right that must be defended in policy, in funding, and in our national conversation.
Our students deserve a government that sees their pursuit of education as admirable, not criminal. They deserve universities that protect them, not betray them. They deserve a future where their sacrifices and those of their families are honored, not mocked. And they deserve a society that recognizes our collective liberation depends on our commitment to education as a public good—one that we must fight to preserve through voting, through advocacy, and through refusing the narrative that education is merely a private commodity.
To all students who are graduating: I'm so proud of you. All of your ancestors are cheering you on, celebrating you because you really are their wildest dreams coming true. Keep on world-building, even amid everything falling apart. Pick up the pieces and imagine the worlds of collective liberation that you have practiced building in classrooms where you worked across difference, where you learned to turn toward each other rather than away. You won't be alone in this work; we'll be there, right by your side, organizing in solidarity across our differences, just as you've learned to do. The skills of dialogue, of challenging each other with care, of finding common ground while honoring our distinct experiences—these are exactly what we need to rebuild our democratic institutions. Your education has prepared you not just for careers, but for the crucial work of collective action that lies ahead.
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An Invitation to President Trump From Harvard Law Students
What if this was the letter the U.S. president received from those at what some consider the nation's premiere institution for aspiring lawyers.
Apr 19, 2025
Dear President Trump:
We are Harvard Law students who have read the lengthy and comprehensive list of demands on our Harvard University by your staff. They are assuredly designed to turn this institution of higher education, older than the U.S.A., into a fiefdom under your iron rule. As modest students of medieval history, we see that your demands provide a status for the peasants – the students, the vassals – the faculty, but no one for the role of the Lord of the Manor.
It is obvious that you want to become the LORD OF THE MANOR. We have a proposal. There is no more exalted status at Harvard than that of the law professors. They are the best and brightest law professors in the land; if you doubt that, just ask them. They are specialists in knowledge of the law. However, they are not specialists in the seriously destabilizing arena of lawlessness.
Quite candidly, we believe and can document that you are the world’s expert on lawlessness – its range, depth, rewards and modes of escape from accountability. For some unfathomable reason, you have been far too modest about your unparalleled knowledge in this fast-expanding area of immune business and political activity. We make this claim after reading your statements – about twenty of them – where you explicitly declare your superior knowledge over all in such subjects as “trade,” “technology,” “drones,” “construction,” “devaluation,” “banks,” – “renewables,” “polls” and even “the power of Facebook.” (See the book,“Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All” by Mark Green and Ralph Nader, 2020).
Missing from your expansive proclamations of expertise is the subject of LAWLESSNESS. Having engaged in over 3000 lawsuits and having been sued under tort law and indicted under criminal law, you have demonstrated an escapist skill that even seasoned attorneys find breathtaking. No sheriff has ever caught you. Only one prosecutor has ever convicted you. E. Jean Carroll won two civil tort cases with damages that are still on appeal.
One of your remarkable tactics is interminable stalling of the legal process. Another is how you can personally and continually attack in public, with tough language, the judges and other judicial personnel with complete impunity. As we know from our studies, such vituperative language in the United Kingdom would have landed you in contempt of court and a jail term.
Now, therefore, here is our proposal to fill the position of LORD OF THE MANOR, without impinging on your Day Job as president of the United States. With your permission, we will approach our Dean and request that he appoint you as a VISITING FULL PROFESSOR OF LAW CONDUCTING THE FIRST AND ONLY COURSE IN LAWLESSNESS – its nature, function and strategies of escape from the long arm of the rule of law. It would be the largest class in Harvard Law School history, overflowing our largest auditorium, AUSTIN HALL.
YOU would provide, effortlessly from your extraordinary memory, empirical information never before revealed and analyzed.
Your self-awareness is exceptional, having said in 2019 – “With Article II, I can do whatever I want as President,” and having openly wished that you could be King. To understand the rule of law better, it is necessary to understand the outlaws. This is especially true for you, Mr. President because you once declared, “I know more about courts than any human being on earth.”
Going deeper, you are eminently qualified to lecture us on regions of lawlessness abroad and how you think one should try to establish peaceful and law-abiding governance. The Middle East comes to mind. By enlisting the law school’s reservoir of scholarship on these conflicts you could establish yourself as a Nobel-Prize worthy implementor of a profound peaceful PRO-SEMITISM between Arab and Jewish Semites. Just envision your going to Norway to receive the coveted Award that your detractors could never believe was remotely possible.
We anticipate your affirmative response and understand fully if a condition of your acceptance is that the course be taught by Zoom from the Oval Office. Should you wish to have your lectures streamed to a wider audience, the Law School has all the requisite facilities.
Just your exalted title “Honorable visiting Professor of Law, Donald J. Trump” along with your presiding over the White House will anoint you as the LORD OF THE MANOR. You would be addressed by all members of the Harvard University community as “MY LIEGE.”
We look forward to hearing from you.
Very truly yours,
Harvard Law Students
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