USC tense after valedictorian speech cancelled

Student Asna Tabassum receives a hug of support after her speech invitation was rescinded

Tensions are flaring at the University of Southern California (USC) in the wake of its decision to cancel a graduation speech by a top student.

On Monday, USC said Muslim student Asna Tabassum would no longer be permitted to deliver a speech as valedictorian due to unspecified security threats.

The move came after complaints that her social media presence was anti-Semitic.

It has angered both those opposed to her speaking and those who want the speech to go on as originally planned.

“The university has betrayed me and caved into a campaign of hatred,” Ms Tabassum told the LA Times on Tuesday.

Now, students who support her will hold a “silent march” on Thursday, according to the LA Times, where they will wear masks and hoodies to express their view that Ms Tabassum is being unfairly silenced.

As the 2024 valedictorian, an honour given to a graduating student based on high academic scores and involvement in campus life, Ms Tabassum had been invited to address roughly 65,000 attendees at a commencement ceremony on May 10.

Pro-Israel and Jewish groups objected to her selection, citing a link Ms Tabassum posted on Instagram for a website that called for the “complete abolishment” of Israel.

But the decision to cancel her speech also raised angry objections, as the fight over free speech and the Israel-Gaza intensifies on college campuses. On the other side of the country, for example, Columbia University on Thursday had the New York Police Department clear an encampment on campus of students protesting in support of Palestine.

USC Provost Andrew Guzman denied that Ms Tabassum was being stripped of the opportunity to speak due to anything she might have said in the past and said that the decision had “nothing to do with freedom of speech”.

He cited security concerns related to “the ongoing conflict in the Middle East” in a letter rescinding Ms Tabassum’s invitation to speak on Monday.

Muslim and pro-Palestinian students, including Ms Tabassum, have denied that her speech threatens campus security and say administrators bowed to pressure from pro-Israel organisations.

A petition being circulated by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest Muslim civil rights group in the US, argues that she is the victim of “bigoted attacks” that “are nothing more than thinly veiled manifestations of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism”.

It asks that USC “immediately reverse course, restore her speech, and treat all students fairly and justly”.

Meanwhile, the group Trojans for Israel – which helped lead the on-campus opposition to Ms Tabassum’s selection – criticised the administration for not condemning the valedictorian’s “anti-Semitic bigotry”. The USC mascot is a Trojan warrior.

“Instead the university wrongly implied in its letter that Jewish and Zionist communities are the central threat to safety,” the group said.

The statement added that Jewish students “have received heightened threats to their safety because the university failed to act with moral clarity”.

Rabbi Dov Wagner, who leads the Chabad Jewish Student Center at USC, said tensions there have already been at an all-time high since the 7 October attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.

“Our students are distraught at the vitriol being directed at them, and the unfair way their sentiments and actions are being depicted in the press,” he told the BBC on Thursday.

USC student Danica Gonzalez told NBC that she believed the university’s security argument was a bogus pretext.

“There is no way the university can’t protect her,” she said, pointing to last year’s commencement ceremony which featured President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle.

“It’s just that they’re choosing not to.”