{"id":101692,"date":"2026-05-07T04:35:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T04:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/101692\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T04:35:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T04:35:15","slug":"rutgers-rescinds-commencement-speech-invitation-over-anti-israel-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/101692\/","title":{"rendered":"Rutgers rescinds commencement speech invitation over anti-Israel post"},"content":{"rendered":"

Administrators at Rutgers University<\/a> have canceled a commencement speaker scheduled for next week, citing an \u201cinflammatory claim\u201d the speaker tweeted about Israel.<\/p>\n

Rami Elghandour, a Rutgers alumnus and a producer of an Oscar-nominated docudrama about a Palestinian girl who died in Gaza, was set to deliver the speech at the university\u2019s School of Engineering on May 15. But the university, New Jersey\u2019s public flagship, rescinded the invitation on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press was the first to report that Elghandour\u2019s invitation had been rescinded and that the university said social media posts about Israel were the cause.<\/p>\n

To the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a university representative specifically cited an April 20 tweet by Elghandour that accuses Israel of genocide<\/a> and says the Israelis are \u201crunning dungeons where they train dogs to sexually assault prisoners.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tweet was a response to a post from California Rep. Ro Khanna advocating for cutting US aid to Israel, which was itself a response to a post by AIPAC<\/a>, the pro-Israel lobby that has become a bogeyman in US politics. The unsubstantiated claim that Israel trains dogs to assault prisoners has circulated widely in recent weeks among some pro-Palestinian activists.<\/p>\n

\"AmirAmir Makled, a pro-Palestinian candidate for University of Michigan board of regents, addresses the crowd at a rally for U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Ann Arbor, April 7, 2026. Makled, who had praised Hezbollah’s leader in a past social media post, bested Jewish incumbent regent (credit: ANDREW LAPIN\/JTA)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Rutgers School of Engineering was recently informed that some graduating students would not attend their graduation ceremony due to concerns about the invited speaker\u2019s social media posts, including one that shared an inflammatory claim,\u201d Dory Devlin, a representative for Rutgers University, told JTA in an email. \u201cAfter discussing these concerns with the speaker, the School of Engineering has rescinded the convocation speaker invitation to Rami Elghandour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elghandour decries Rutgers’ decision<\/p>\n

Elghandour, who owns a biotech company and was an executive producer for the award-winning documentary \u201cThe Voice of Hind Rajab,\u201d declined through a spokesperson to respond to a JTA request for comment. The spokesperson pointed to his statement on social media, where he disparaged the school\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter a \u2018few\u2019 students complained about my selection as speaker because of my social media advocacy for Palestine, Rutgers has canceled my speech,\u201d Elghandour wrote. \u201cThey decided that the feelings of a handful of students who said that my social media posts \u2018opposed their beliefs\u2019, were more important than the experience of the entire graduating class, the reputation of the school, the dignity and belonging of Arab and Muslim students, and the First Amendment.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to executive-producing \u201cThe Voice of Hind Rajab,\u201d Elghandour was also a producer on the film \u201cAmerican Doctor,\u201d about three physicians, including a Palestinian and a Jew, who traveled to Gaza to aid civilians there.<\/p>\n

Rutgers University Hillel, the campus Jewish group that also engages students around Israel, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Rutgers settled a federal civil rights investigation into its handling of antisemitism in January 2025. It agreed to update its anti-discrimination policies as investigators were poised to find that the school did not protect Jewish students from antisemitism in the wake of the October 7<\/a>, 2023, attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.<\/p>\n

The incident adds to a string of dustups over Israel at commencements this year and in the past. The University of Michigan\u2019s president apologized after Faculty Senate Chair Derek Peterson praised pro-Palestinian student protesters during his speech on Saturday; Elghandour shared several posts in defense of Peterson\u2019s speech.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Administrators at Rutgers University have canceled a commencement speaker scheduled for next week, citing an \u201cinflammatory claim\u201d the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[2922,14607,15721,37,1048,51,9733],"class_list":{"0":"post-101692","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-aipac","9":"tag-anti-israel","10":"tag-campus-antisemitism","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-social-media","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-university"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116531437390902521","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}