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Students disrupt MIT chancellor at graduation after class president banned for pro-Palestine speech
"We are watching Israel try to wipe Palestine off the face of the Earth, and it's a shame that MIT is a part of it," Megha Vemuri, the class president, said in her speech the day prior.
Students erupted in jeers Friday as MIT Chancellor Melissa Nobles delivered her graduation speech to the Class of 2025. The protests were in support of Megha Vemuri, the class president who was banned from the morning’s undergraduate ceremonies after inserting pro-Palestine remarks into her address the day prior.
In a live recording of Friday’s event, Nobles stops her speech to address the disruption.
“Excuse me,” she says. “I respect that you have a message to send, but this is not the time or place. Today is about our graduates and their families. Please respect them and allow me to continue.”
After applause and cheers outweigh the chants from the protesting students, Nobles takes a pause and continues her speech.
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“This is the day of the graduates,” she added. “We are here to celebrate you and to award your degrees.”
According to The Boston Globe, an email from Noble to Vemuri stated that she and her family were barred from the campus for most of the day on Friday, after her speech at another graduation ceremony on Thursday.
“Participation in Commencement activities is a privilege,” Nobles wrote in the email, which was obtained by the Globe. “You deliberately and repeatedly misled Commencement organizers. While we acknowledge your right to free expression, your decision to lead a protest from the stage, disrupting an important institute ceremony, was a violation of MIT’s time, place and manner rules for campus expression.”
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Vemuri, in an emailed response seen by the Globe, disputed her speech amounted to “a protest from the stage” and called the campus ban “an overreach.”
During the 2025 OneMIT Commencement Ceremony, which was live-streamed on Thursday, Vemuri spoke about the campus protests that took place last spring in support of Palestine, which brought cheers from the crowd. Vemuri called on MIT graduates to demand that the university cut ties with Israel.
“We are watching Israel try to wipe Palestine off the face of the Earth, and it’s a shame that MIT is a part of it,” she said during her speech.
“This is a world that we will be entering with an immeasurable responsibility,” she added later. “We will carry with us the stamp of the MIT name, the same name that is directly complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, and so we carry with us the obligation to do everything we can to stop it.”
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