The 2025 class president of MIT was barred from attending her graduation ceremony on Friday after delivering a speech denouncing the war in Gaza at a commencement event the day before. Megha Vemuri told CNN that after her speech, the university's senior leadership informed her she was not allowed to attend Friday's commencement ceremony and was barred from campus until the event concluded. Vemuri will still receive her degree, an MIT spokesperson told CNN. "What I am dealing with right now is absolutely nothing compared to the people of Palestine, and I'd take on much more if it meant helping their cause," Vemuri told CNN Sunday. The class president was a scheduled speaker at Thursday's OneMIT Commencement ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she took to the podium, a keffiyeh – a symbol of pro-Palestinian solidarity – draped over her graduation robe. She praised her peers for protesting the war in Gaza and criticized the university's ties to Israel. Tensions over university protests against the war in Gaza have come to a head at this year's graduation ceremonies. New York University recently said it was withholding the diploma of a student who condemned "genocide" in Gaza while delivering a graduation speech. Alongside students at NYU, Harvard, Columbia and other universities nationwide, MIT students set up protest encampments last spring to denounce the war in Gaza, facing disciplinary threats from the university. "You have faced the obstacle of fear before, and you turned it into fuel to stand up for what is right. You showed the world that MIT wants a free Palestine," Vemuri said Thursday to the audience, with peers, family, university staff and Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey in attendance. Immediately following Vemuri's speech, MIT President Sally Kornbluth took to the podium and tried to settle the crowd. "Listen, folks. At MIT, we value freedom of expression, but today's about the graduates," Kornbluth said. An MIT spokesperson told CNN the speech Vemuri delivered Thursday "was not the one that was provided by the speaker in advance." "MIT supports free expression but stands by its decision, which was in response to the individual deliberately and repeatedly misleading Commencement organizers and leading a protest from the stage, disrupting an important Institute ceremony," the spokesperson said in a statement. The MIT Coalition for Palestine said university chancellor Melissa Nobles sent an email to Vemuri informing her she was not permitted to attend Friday's graduation ceremony and her tickets to the event had been deactivated. Vemuri says she's grateful for her family, who have been present this week, supporting her. She says she's not disappointed about not getting to walk the stage. "I see no need for me to walk across the stage of an institution that is complicit in this genocide," Vemuri said. "I am, however, disappointed that MIT's officials massively overstepped their roles to punish me without merit or due process, with no indication of any specific policy broken," she added, calling MIT's purported support of free speech hypocritical. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has condemned the university's decision to ban Vemuri from the ceremony. "MIT must respect academic freedom and respect the voices of its students, not punish and intimidate those who speak out against genocide and in support of Palestinian humanity," CAIR-Massachusetts Executive Director Tahirah Amatul-Wadud said in a statement. In the days after her speech, the young graduate has received nationwide media attention, along with a torrent of ardent support and biting criticism. "I can handle the attention, positive and negative, if it means spreading that message further," Vemuri told CNN. — CNN
