Jadaliyya Co-Editor Noura Erakat Discusses Anti-Palestinian Censorship at Graduation Ceremonies on Democracy Now (21 May)

Noura Erakat is a Professor of Africana Studies  and the Program of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Noura is the author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019), which received the Palestine Book Award and the Bronze Medal for the Independent Publishers Book Award in Current Events/Foreign Affairs. She is co-founding editor of Jadaliyya and an editorial board member of the Journal of Palestine Studies as well as Human Geography. She is a co-founding board member of the DC Palestinian Film and Arts Festival. She has served as Legal Counsel for a Congressional Subcommittee in the US House of Representatives, as Legal Advocate for the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights, and as national organizer of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. Noura has also produced video documentaries, including "Gaza In Context" and "Black Palestinian Solidarity.” Her writings have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation,  Al Jazeera, and the Boston Review. She is a frequent commentator on CBS News, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, Fox News, the BBC, and NPR, among others. She completed non-resident fellowship of the Religious Literacy Project at Harvard Divinity School in 2021. In 2022, she was selected as a Freedom Fellow by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. 

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: As colleges and universities hold graduation ceremonies across the United States, many schools are attempting to silence pro-Palestinian voices from those commemorations, from canceling speakers to eliminating live student speeches altogether. This comes at a time of increasing repression of campus activism supporting Palestine. The group Palestine Legal recently revealed it now receives 300% more requests for legal help than it did before 2023, with the overwhelming majority of requests coming from students and college faculty.

AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this month, the University of Michigan’s president issued a public apology after a professor, Derek Peterson, praised pro-Palestinian students during his commencement address. These are some of Professor Peterson’s remarks.

DEREK PETERSON: Sing for Moritz Levy, the first Jewish professor at the University of Michigan. Appointed professor of French in 1896, he was to open the doors of this great university to generations of Jewish students who found in Ann Arbor a safe haven from the antisemitism of East Coast universities.

Sing for the students of the Black Action Movement, whose members demanded a curriculum that would reflect the experience and identity of Black people in this country.

Sing for the pro-Palestinian student activists, who have over these past two years opened our hearts to the injustice and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza.

The greatness of this institution does not only rest on the shoulders and on the accomplishments of our student athletes, who deserve all the congratulations we can offer them. But the greatness of this university rests also on the courage and the conviction of student activists who have pushed this university down the path toward justice.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was University of Michigan professor Derek Peterson. University President Domenico Grasso later called those remarks “hurtful and insensitive to many members of our community.”

Separately, Rutgers University withdrew an invitation to the biotech CEO Rami Elghandour to give a graduation address. Last week, Elghandour recorded a video reading the speech he had planned to give at the Rutgers Engineering School convocation.

RAMI ELGHANDOUR: Kindness is having empathy for others who may not have a voice. It’s why I care so much and speak so often about so many issues that don’t directly impact me. I’ve spoken up about ICE, Palestine, Black lives, abortion and gender equity. It’s why I got into the film business, and I’m supporting stories to amplify the voice of the voiceless, like Hind Rajab. And of all these topics, I’ve only received pushback on Palestine, multiple attempts to censor me or get me fired. Totally a coincidence the speech was canceled over Palestine, right? But it’s also the topic where I received the most support by far. I refuse to yield, because I believe in the cause. And like Superman, I believe in truth, justice and the American way.

AMY GOODMAN: That was biotech CEO Rami Elghandour reading the graduation speech he was disinvited from giving at Rutgers.

We’re joined now by two guests. Noura Erakat is a Palestinian human rights attorney and a professor at Rutgers University. This week, she helped organize a People’s Convocation for Palestine, where Rami Elghandour spoke. We’re also joined by Shivani Desai, a graduating member of CUNY Law School class of 2026 and a member of CUNY Law Students for Justice in Palestine. For the third year in a row, CUNY Law School will have no student graduation speakers.

I want to begin with professor Noura Erakat. So, we covered this controversy last week. We had the CEO, Rami Elghandour, in our studio, where he had just been canceled, his address to the Rutgers Engineering School. But then, talk about the alternative ceremony you set up and what this meant, the thousands, tens of thousands of students who wrote objecting, not to mention the faculty groups and so many faculty at Rutgers.

NOURA ERAKAT: Good morning, Amy. And thank you so much.

Yes, we organized a People’s Convocation for Palestine. We organized it in nine days, to be able to celebrate all of our students, and not just the few students who the administration and the Board of Governors decided whose feelings mattered more than the material conditions our students are enduring. Rutgers has 70,000 students across three campuses. About 10% of those students are Muslim. Something like 15% are Arab, Palestinian and Muslim. Thousands of our students are immigrants, asylum seekers. They are of Black descent, Latinx origin. They are a diverse population who together constitute the many who are opposed to genocide. Rutgers is the largest public school in New Jersey and should be representative of that population.

And in this instance, when Rami would have spoken for thousands of those students, the university decided to prioritize the feelings of a few in an OPOCprocess, for which there was no due process or review. The student, the faculty senate issued a censure of the dean. The union issued a resolution demanding the reinstatement of Rami. The School of Engineering collected 1,300-plus letters. Professor Troy Shinbrot, a professor of engineering, attempted to deliver those letters to the School of Engineering, and police, almost a dozen police, blocked him from entering his own building. They are telling us that democracy doesn’t matter and won’t work here.

And this continues a legacy at Rutgers. In 2024, our Center for Islamic Life at Rutgers — New Jersey also happens to be the fourth-largest populations of Muslims in the United States. The Center for Islamic Life was vandalized. Islamic objects were vandalized and destroyed. The Palestinian flag was stolen. Have you heard about it? There was no media hullabaloo over it. There were no Senate hearings over it. In fact, our former president, Jonathan Holloway, during the Senate hearings, was not asked about that, but only asked about antisemitism, and he didn’t raise that concern.

So, our alternative convocation was a refusal to submit to this dictate in this moment that’s telling us that democracy doesn’t matter. Our students are being told that your families, your Palestinian families, are expected to suffer and die, and you should be OK with it. One of our graduates, Dr. Omar Abuattieh, who was the 2025 Rhodes scholar, the 2026 Truman scholar — Rutgers is so proud of him, they have blasted his face everywhere, including at Newark International Airport — has family in Gaza. And he told us at the alternative convocation that Rutgers wants his excellence, but not him.

I am a full professor at Rutgers. My cousin Ahmed was assassinated and killed at an illegal checkpoint in 2020. His body continues to be held in a freezer at Greenberg Forensic Institute, associated with Tel Aviv University. Rutgers has an MOU with Tel Aviv University. They are telling me that they want my excellence, without me being able to protest this cruelty, this depravity that happens against my own family.

This also reflects the fact that Rutgers has mobilized. The students in 2024, 80% of them, voted for divestment from Tel Aviv, to end the MOU with Tel Aviv University, to disinvest from corporations that are invested in death making and apartheid and in genocide. The faculty union and the adjunct union voted by 58% for divestment.

The fact that they are telling us that democracy doesn’t matter should scare everyone. This is not just about Palestine, but they are telling us that there is a future they want to mold, and we cannot participate in forging that future. In this moment, we have actually worked tirelessly to create these conditions. And now, because they can’t play with us, so to speak, in this open playground of free speech, of democratic participation, they want to subvert it altogether.

We are not the lowest-hanging fruit as Palestinians. We are the canary in the coal mine. We are the Trojan horse to bring in these policies that will affect everyone. As your other student will tell you now, not only did CUNY Law cancel the three speakers, but NYU this year canceled 13-plus culture identity graduations. University of Texas, Austin has dismantled Black studies, women’s studies, as well as Latinx programming. Again, Palestinians here are the frontline, not the lowest-hanging fruit.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Shivani Desai, you are a graduating member of CUNY Law School, of the City University of New York. CUNY has not — CUNY Law has not had a student speaker at commencement for three years in a row. You’ll be graduating, in fact, today, just a couple of hours from now. Could you explain what’s been happening there, why there hasn’t been a student speaker at graduation? And what’s going to happen today at your ceremony?

SHIVANI DESAI: Yes, definitely. Thank you so much for having me.

So, of course, I’m going to graduation right after this. And this will be the third graduation and commencement ceremony in a row where we do not have a student speaker, where we do not have a faculty speaker, and we do not have a live-stream commencement. So, CUNY Law not only denied us of the chance to hear from a fellow classmate that we would democratically elect to hear about their vision for our work and the world, they also denied us of our chance to hear from mentors that we find brilliant, that we want to hear from through the faculty speech. And they denied us from a live-stream commencement, so that people who come from diaspora and collectivist communities could share this moment with their family across the world. They took all of that away from us, and they took that away specifically because of Palestine repression.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to say, Shivani, that you are wearing your graduation gown — 

SHIVANI DESAI: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — and your stole. And that stole says “Palestine” on it. You’re going to graduation right from our broadcast?

SHIVANI DESAI: Yes, I’m going straight to graduation from this broadcast. And, you know, the reason I’m here and I’m so excited and passionate to speak is that I’m representing a large and vast coalition across the graduating class of 2026 and across the other years of our grade, because we entered school in the fall of 2023. We entered school, and this iteration of the genocide, following decades of occupation, began. We were 1Ls when the genocide began. We were 1Ls when we faced brutalization at the encampment. We were in our second year when we watched green card holders and student visa holders get arrested and detained for their Palestine speech. And we are in our third year when we watched this ICEescalate its reign of terror across this country, and watched the NYPD face more brutalization. We have been through a lot of brutalization.

And we know that our school and our country is funding Israel’s war crimes and genocide. CUNY Law has blood on its hands. It has money in Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and other corporations and companies that are war profiteers and weapons manufacturers. And so, we don’t consent to our tuition dollars going to this genocide. We have never consented to it.

CUNY Law and across the CUNY system, they have tried to silence us. One thing we want to note is that CUNY Law is just one example of repression across CUNY. So, across the CUNY system, we’ve seen this kind of silencing of Palestinian activism. At City College, Hadeeqa had her senior year stolen from her for her leadership in Palestine activism. At Brooklyn College, the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter is facing arbitrary Henderson Rules and protest rules that only affect them. At the College of Staten Island, the valedictorian is a Palestinian, and they had their speech revoked, as well. And then there are four faculty members that were fired for their speech in support of Palestine, and they have also been facing a lot of retaliation. Three of them are back, but we’re still waiting for one more.

AMY GOODMAN: And I wanted to say, talking about professors speaking out, following up on the clip we played of professor Derek Peterson at the University of Michigan, looking at the publication Inside Higher Ed, they said professor “Peterson said university officials knew he would mention pro-Palestinian protests during his speech. While drafting it, he incorporated feedback from officials to remove the word 'genocide' in order to make it less provocative. 'Even though the United Nations uses that phrase, and even though it's a scholarly descriptor,’” professor Peterson said, “'I left it out because I didn't wish to provoke anger and unnecessary bad feelings.’” We had asked Derek Peterson if he would join us, as well, today, the professor at University of Michigan, but he is receiving death threats. His house is under police protection. Noura Erakat, this kind of very serious threat to professors and students alike, as we begin to wrap up?

NOURA ERAKAT: Yeah, Amy, you know, I think it’s really important to bring this back to why this matters, which are the conditions in Gaza, right? We’re seven months out from the so-called ceasefire, where 2.1 million Palestinians continue to be encaged. The majority of them, some 77%, are reliant on food aid for survival. Most of them live in emergency housing. Six hundred and forty thousand students, children, do not have access to education. And yet, we are being told the BOP just submitted a report to the Security Council that tells them, you know, “We can’t rebuild anything until Hamas disarms.” I mean, the world is upside down. And as professor Maya Mikdashi has repeatedly said on campus, the university is literally asking us not to teach this. We are asked to betray the empirical record, including the one on genocide and apartheid, and we refuse to do that.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Professor Erakat, before we go, you have family that attends the largest mosque in San Diego, the mosque that was just shot up, with three men, including the beloved security guard who had eight children himself, was killed?

NOURA ERAKAT: That’s my mama’s mosque. That’s my — that’s my grandma’s mosque, who was born in 1937, before Israel was established. That’s my uncles and aunties. Those are my cousins. And we are so grateful that that shooter didn’t come on a Friday, and so distraught that this happened, where they were aiming to massacre children. And yet even the response to that is inadequate.

And there is a direct line between the dehumanization of Palestinians, who we cannot fight for their lives and argue against genocide and agitate for a better future, and the dehumanization of these children and of our families, because state, society and media is normalizing it. The only censure in Congress happened against Rashida Tlaib, honorable Rashida Tlaib, for her advocacy for Palestine. And yet, Randy Fine, who has compared Muslims to dogs, has gone held unaccountable. These things matter. Here is there. And so, that is why — 

AMY GOODMAN: Noura —

NOURA ERAKAT: — we continue to agitate.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Noura Erakat, we have to leave it there, Palestinian human rights attorney, professor at Rutgers University, author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine, and Shivani Desai, graduating member of the CUNY Law School class of 2026, a member of CUNY Law Students for Justice in Palestine. Congratulations today — 

SHIVANI DESAI: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: — for all your accomplishments.

That does it for our show. A very happy birthday to Tey-Marie Astudillo! I’ll be broadcasting from Denver, Colorado, tomorrow. Steal This Story, Please!, the film about Democracy Now!'s 30-year history, will be a the Sie cinema in Denver, as well as in Boulder. And I hope to see people both places. I'm Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.