The University of Southern California (USC) will not have commencement speakers at its upcoming ceremony after the institution canceled a speech from its pro-Palestinian valedictorian, the school announced Friday.
USC has been met with protests and criticism after it announced it would cancel the 2024 commencement speech from Asna Tabassum, a fourth-year student from Chino Hills with a major in biomedical engineering and a minor in resistance to genocide. The school cited safety precautions as reason to cancel Tabassum’s speech.
In a statement, the university said:
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"To keep the focus on our graduates, we are redesigning the commencement program. Given the highly publicized circumstances surrounding our main-stage commencement program, university leadership has decided it is best to release our outside speakers and honorees from attending this year’s ceremony.”
Tabassum, who is a first-generation South Asian American Muslim, told NBC4 that she was disappointed by the school’s decision to not have her speak at the graduation. She called this a "campaign of hate," meant to silence her voice.
“As your class valedictorian, I implore my USC classmates to think outside the box — to work towards a world where cries for equality and human dignity are not manipulated to be expressions of hatred,” Tabassum said in a statement.
She added that she was not aware of any specific threats made against her or the campus.
The nonprofit Council on American-Islamic Relations' Los Angeles office called the move by USC to not have Tabassum deliver the commencement speech a “cowardly decision.”
In a written statement, CAIR-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush said "The dishonest and defamatory attacks on Asna are nothing more than thinly-veiled manifestations of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism, which have been weaponized against college students across the country who speak up for human rights — and for Palestinian humanity."
