{"id":779133,"date":"2026-05-07T07:37:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T07:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/779133\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T07:37:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T07:37:23","slug":"rutgers-graduation-speaker-canceled-for-pro-palestinian-posts-says-decision-sends-dangerous-message-us-universities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/779133\/","title":{"rendered":"Rutgers graduation speaker canceled for pro-Palestinian posts says decision sends \u2018dangerous\u2019 message | US universities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rutgers University abruptly rescinded its invitation to a prominent alum who was slated to deliver a graduation speech next week after some students complained about social media posts he had published about Palestine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rami Elghandour \u2013 a tech entrepreneur, graduate of Rutgers\u2019 School of Engineering, and executive producer of the Oscar-nominated film The Voice of Hind Rajab<\/a> \u2013 was set to deliver a graduation address at the school\u2019s campus in New Brunswick, New Jersey on 15 May.<\/p>\n

But the school\u2019s dean, Alberto Cuiti\u00f1o, called Elghandour last week and told him he was cancelling the speech because of students\u2019 complaints, though he declined to say how many students and what posts they had complained about. The dean, <\/strong>Elghandour said, broadly described the posts as \u201copposed to their beliefs\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is most puzzling to me is that they champion me for my humanitarian views and now they\u2019re canceling me for them,\u201d Elghandour told the Guardian in an exclusive interview.<\/p>\n

Cuiti\u00f1o told him he supports everyone \u201csaying what they think\u201d but that the students\u2019 issue was \u201cwith you and your beliefs\u201d, Elghandour said. He added that there would be no new speaker at the event, and possibly in the future, to avoid similar issues.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Rutgers confirmed in a statement to the Guardian that the school had rescinded its invitation to Elghandour after the engineering school was \u201cinformed that some graduating students would not attend their graduation ceremony due to concerns about the invited speaker\u2019s social media posts\u201d.<\/p>\n

The spokesperson did not elaborate on the posts and noted the ceremony in question is one of many planned as part of graduation at Rutgers, a public university with more than 70,000 students. \u201cThis decision keeps the focus on our engineering students and honors the celebratory spirit of the event to ensure that no graduate feels forced to choose between their personal convictions and a convocation ceremony,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Elghandour has frequently posted about Palestine and shared posts by others, including by sharing<\/a> reports of Israeli soldiers using dogs to sexually abuse prisoners, which some have described as \u201cantisemitic blood libel\u201d.<\/p>\n

The cancellation of the Rutgers speech is just the latest controversy surrounding fears of pro-Palestinian speech at <\/strong>graduation ceremonies. New York University has banned some live speeches at this year\u2019s ceremonies while the City University of New York\u2019s Law School has banned student speeches altogether, and the College of Staten Island, which is also part of the Cuny system, is pre-recording student speeches.<\/p>\n

Derek Peterson, chair of the University of Michigan faculty senate, speaks during the university\u2019s commencement ceremony on 2 May. Photograph: Jacob Hamilton\/Ann Arbor News via AP<\/p>\n

Dozens of students protested or walked out of ceremonies following nationwide protests and encampments in 2024. Since then, several<\/a> students<\/a> have<\/a> used<\/a> their speeches to express support for Palestinians\u2019 rights, prompting universities to denounce their statements and in at least one case withhold their diplomas, among other punishments. Last month, Cecilia Culver, a George Washington University alumna who was barred from campus last year after using her graduation speech to criticize the university\u2019s ties to Israel, sued the school<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last week, a history <\/strong>professor at the University of Michigan paid tribute during his speech to the \u201cpro-Palestinian student activists who have over these past two years opened our hearts to the injustice and inhumanity of Israel\u2019s war in Gaza\u201d, prompting backlash and an apology from the university president.<\/p>\n

Elghandour, who is Egyptian-American, is the chair and CEO of Arcellx, a biotechnology company. He is also an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights on social media. In addition to his work on the Voice of Hind Rajab<\/a>, about a Palestinian five-year-old girl who was killed by the Israeli military while waiting to be rescued by paramedics, he served as executive producer on American Doctor, a documentary about three US doctors working in Gaza during the war.<\/p>\n

He said he has previously been criticized for his social media posts by an Arcellx shareholder and some social media users<\/a>, and that he brought in a law firm to review his social media history, which the firm concluded contained no hate speech, violence or anything against his company\u2019s code of conduct.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think [Palestine] is the moral issue of our time and I believe it\u2019s been used to undermine democratic institutions in the US,\u201d Elghandour said. He referred to the cancelled invitation as a sign or \u201cerosion of free speech and the first amendment\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen a livestreamed genocide,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd we\u2019re supposed to worry about the feelings of the people who support that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elghandour said that he had been looking forward to delivering the speech and that he had not planned to speak about Palestine but about \u201ckindness being a superpower\u201d and how to be successful \u201cwithout compromising your beliefs\u201d, something he said <\/strong>students have often asked him about. He added that he had been actively involved with the university, including speaking at an on-campus \u201cfireside chat\u201d with Cuiti\u00f1o earlier this year, in which the topic of Palestine repeatedly came up \u2013 with no one raising complaints as far he knows.<\/p>\n

In an announcement about the ceremony that\u2019s since been taken offline, the school had celebrated Elghandour as an \u201cimpassioned champion\u201d of gender fairness, social mobility, and \u201cprincipled leadership\u201d. They also noted his role in the two films about Gaza.<\/p>\n

He said he told the dean the cancellation sent a \u201cdangerous\u201d message to students: \u201cDon\u2019t you dare speak up and say anything that you believe.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Michigan, the brief remarks about pro-Palestinian activists by Derek Peterson, a historian of colonialism and outgoing chair of the faculty senate, prompted a condemnation<\/a> from the university\u2019s president as well as some Republican politicians calling for \u201cconsequences<\/a>\u201d and for the federal government to cut off<\/a> the university\u2019s funding. In response, more than 1,400 faculty members<\/a> at the university have condemned the president\u2019s remarks and defended Peterson\u2019s academic freedom and freedom of expression, as have the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Peterson said that he had only slightly deviated from prepared remarks he had discussed with administrators and that he had specifically chosen not to use the word \u201cgenocide\u201d in an effort to be \u201cdiplomatic\u201d. His brief reference to pro-Palestinian activists, which was made in the context of the professor describing student activism on campus over several decades, was intended to encourage students \u201cto see themselves as inheritors of a noble tradition of civic protest and civic action\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMichigan is not a finishing school for polite young men and women; we don\u2019t train our students to be pearl clutches who are offended at every speech that they find difficult,\u201d Peterson added. \u201cWe\u2019re meant to be training students to be in the public service in a world in which there is injustice, there\u2019s oppression and there\u2019s disagreement.\u201d<\/p>\n

He took particular issue with the university president\u2019s comment that the remarks were \u201cinappropriate and did not align with the purpose of the occasion\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see graduations as an occasion for us as faculty to remind our students about what we expect them to do with public education,\u201d Peterson said. \u201cAnd that is not just to go off and get rich, but rather to place themselves in the service of the common good.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article was amended on 6 May 2026 to clarify that the speech cancelled had been scheduled for a Rutgers\u2019 School of Engineering ceremony, not the university\u2019s broader commencement ceremony<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rutgers University abruptly rescinded its invitation to a prominent alum who was slated to deliver a graduation speech…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":779134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[50,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-779133","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116532153319446664","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}