Indian-American Megha Vemuri Banned From MIT Event For Pro-Palestine Speech

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has banned Indian-American pupil Megha Vemuri from her graduation commencement ceremonial aft she delivered a pro-Palestine code during an lawsuit connected Thursday (May 29). Ms Vemuri, MIT's people of 2025 president, was scheduled to beryllium the marshal astatine the ceremony, but assemblage chancellor, Melissa Nobles, announced she could not be the event.

Ms Noble besides stated that Ms Vemuri and her household were banned from the assemblage field for astir of the day.

“You deliberately and repeatedly misled Commencement organizers,” Ms Nobles wrote successful an email to Ms Vemuri, arsenic per the Boston Globe.

“While we admit your close to escaped expression, your determination to pb a protestation from the stage, disrupting an important institute ceremony, was a usurpation of MIT's time, spot and mode rules for field expression.”

What did she say?

Wearing a reddish keffiyeh, a scarf intended to amusement enactment for the Palestinian cause, Ms Vemuri slated Israel for its actions successful Gaza. She besides slammed the assemblage for its ties to Israel and called connected chap graduates to instrumentality a stand.

“The Israeli concern forces are the lone overseas subject that MIT has probe ties with; this means that Israel's battle connected the Palestinian radical is not lone aided and abetted by our country, but our school,” Ms Vemuri said.

“We are watching Israel effort to hitch Palestine disconnected the look of the earth, and it is simply a shame that MIT is simply a portion of it.”

She praised students who had stood up successful enactment of Palestine contempt unit from the apical hierarchy astatine the university.

“Last spring, MIT's undergraduate assemblage and Graduate Student Union voted overwhelmingly to chopped ties with the genocidal Israeli military. You called for a imperishable ceasefire successful Gaza, and you stood successful solidarity with the pro-Palestine activists connected campus," she said.

Who is Megha Vemuri?

Born and raised successful Alpharetta, Georgia, Ms Vemuri completed her precocious schoolhouse astatine Alpharetta High School successful Georgia and graduated successful 2021. In the aforesaid year, Ms Vemuri enrolled astatine MIT wherever she precocious completed her undergraduate grade successful machine science, neuroscience, and linguistics portion serving arsenic the president of the graduating class.

She is besides a portion of Written Revolution, which is simply a MIT pupil radical and provides a level to revolutionary ideas. Before that she worked arsenic a probe intern with the UCT Neuroscience Institute successful South Africa.