More than one university is pulling the plug on having graduation exercises at all, but if who Harvard chose is indictative of the quality of speakers, then this is going to be deeply unpleasant and quite vile.

We already know that USC has canceled their commencement – which prompted responses from seniors, who, if they are finishing their degree in four years, are now missing their college graduation after losing out on their high school graduation due to Covid lockdowns.
https://twitter.com/Zigmanfreud/status/1783650223132451116
Of course, USC had already created problems for itself by deciding that their valedictorian couldn’t give her speech due to “safety concerns.”

Asna Tabassum was scheduled to speak at the commencement but has since been told that USC will not allow her to do so due to safety concerns.

Tabassum released a personal statement through The Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“I am honored to have been selected as USC Class of 2024 Valedictorian. Although this should have been a time of celebration for my family, friends, professors, and classmates, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian voices have subjected me to a campaign of racist hatred because of my uncompromising belief in human rights for all.”

However, the university says Tabassum’s speech isn’t being canceled due to her political and personal views but because of concern for her well-being after receiving backlash from pro-Israel groups.

“After careful consideration, we have decided that our student valedictorian will not deliver a speech at commencement,” USC said in a statement. “While this is disappointing, tradition must give way to safety…The issue here is how best to maintain campus security and safety, period.”

Of course, the “pro-Israel groups” aren’t really the problem here, as the protests on campus that eventually shut down graduation wasn’t coming from the pro-Israel side. USC just didn’t want the potential for some very bad optics, and now they are trying to cover their butts with a last minute “Graduate Celebration” off-campus at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Call me crazy, but somehow I think there are going to be protesters showing up anyway.

The explosion of pro-Hamas and pro-anarchist protests and tent camps on multiple college campuses has caused even Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to keep themselves away from giving high-profile college commencement addresses, which is traditionally something that presidents and vice presidents will do.

Biden is scheduled to speak at Morehouse College and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in May, while Harris is only slated to give a graduation speech at the Air Force Academy. First lady Jill Biden, who teaches at a community college, is expected to deliver a commencement address, though no school has been named.

Two White House officials noted that the number of speeches for Biden and Harris is similar to the two previous years. By comparison, when then-President Barack Obama was seeking re-election in 2012, he delivered addresses at the Air Force Academy, Barnard College and Joplin High School. That same year, then-Vice President Biden spoke at West Point and high schools in the battleground states of Virginia and Florida.

Biden campaign officials say that despite the media focus on campus protests, public polling and their own research show that young voters are more concerned with other issues. A new Harvard University poll found that inflation and health care topped the list of issues most important to voters ages 18-29. Gun violence, protecting democracy, climate change and women’s reproductive rights also were higher than the war in Gaza.

But John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, said polls and other research he’s conducted underscore the challenges Biden faces in this environment, as well as potential opportunity for him to shore up support by addressing concerns about Gaza head-on in a setting like a commencement ceremony, where students but also their parents, faculty and administrators are gathered together.

“That’s an important opportunity to try to bridge these divides, perhaps like only Biden can do. Because there are divides on this issue,” he said.

Biden’s quickie presser yesterday probably didn’t make these keffiyeh-wearing social justice warriors happy, but we all know why both Biden and Harris are avoiding a big college graduation speech.

They have to actively avoid their base to avoid being embarrassed by them with normies https://t.co/LO6bOCCRdo

— Sunny (@sunnyright) April 27, 2024

So, with commencements being canceled, and Biden and Harris only going to “safe” places to give such speeches (although Morehouse College is apparently really nervous about what might happen when Biden shows up), who is left to give the speeches? Well, Harvard has apparently just decided to lean into it all. After all, their president has already lost her job over the anti-Semitism on campus and her plagiarism, so why not just go whole hog and give the pro-Hamas radicals someone they will LOVE at their commencement?

Meet Maria Ressa, who will be delivering the commencement address at Harvard.

Ressa, the CEO of the Philippines-based news site Rappler and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, will give the university’s commencement address on May 23, at a time when Harvard faces a congressional investigation for what House Republicans have called a “failure to protect Jewish students” and as anti-Semitism has surged on college campuses across the country.

Ressa’s comments on the Israel-Gaza war, and her news outlet’s editorial stance, could add to concerns about Harvard’s promotion of anti-Israel views. Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, as well as holding Israel to standards not applied to other countries, could be considered anti-Semitic under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition.

In January, Ressa signed a letter accusing Israel of “unabated killing of journalists in Israeli airstrikes since the start of the Israel-Gaza war.” The letter called for an “immediate end to the bombardment of journalists and apparent targeting in some cases of our colleagues in Gaza and the region.”

She sounds GREAT. Harvard Hamas LARPers are going to just LOVE her.

In a November editorial, Rappler called for a ceasefire and compared Israel’s actions to those by Adolf Hitler, according to a translation.

“What Israel is doing is clearly a disproportionate response and its intention is not simply to retaliate, but to launch an all-out war,” the editorial said. “In the intensity of Israel’s godlike technology, its paleolithic instincts can be seen in the lack of effort to differentiate between civilians and its enemy Hamas.”

The editorial said Israel’s actions were “about to reach genocide.”

“It is a great irony that the [Jewish] race that suffered centuries of oppression, even genocide at the hands of Adolf Hitler, is now [denying] the same aspirations [for] the Palestinians,” said the column.

“We like to think that our world is more modern, more aware, and more compassionate, compared for example to the time of Adolf Hitler, or the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima,” the editorial went on.

In its coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict, Rappler has also referred to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as “militant” groups rather than terrorist organizations.

Well done, Harvard. I’m sure this won’t come up in your civil rights investigations being run by the Department of Education AT ALL.

A lot of progressive-coded speakers have refrained from equating Israel with Nazi Germany. I’m pretty sure Harvard could have found one of them!

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) May 3, 2024

Does anyone want to lay odds on what kind of speech Maria Ressa will be giving to Harvard graduates? Will she give platitudes about how important news media is, or is she going to throw red meat to the masses and use some of these same analogies that she’s used in her own work? I can tell you which one will get her the bigger cheers from the graduating crowd.

Featured image via Ingfbruno on Wikimedia Commons, cropped, Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0 DEED)