Over the past two years, commencement speakers at the City University of New York law school have placed support for the Palestinians and opposition to Israel at the center of their speeches.
The reaction was intense.
So this year, long before other campuses across the United States faced upheaval following pro-Palestinian student protests, the CUNY Law School administration took a new approach. In September, before Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, the school announced that there would be no student speakers at this year’s commencement ceremony.
This choice is now drawing its own backlash and has sparked more controversy surrounding the event.
This spring, several students at the school sued university officials, claiming the school was suppressing free speech and violating their First Amendment rights by not allowing a student-elected speaker to to make a speech. Two guests scheduled to speak — Deborah N. Archer, a civil rights attorney and president of the American Civil Liberties Union, and Muhammad U. Faridi, a trial lawyer — recently withdrew from the event.
The ceremony will now no longer have outside speakers or keynote speeches, the law school said.
The school also announced in April that it would hold its May 23 ceremony off campus, at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, a departure from ceremonies for the past two years, which were held at CUNY facilities. The Apollo requires guests to have tickets and has a smaller capacity than the school’s previous venues, the law school said.
In an email to CUNY students announcing her decision to withdraw, Ms. Archer said she felt obligated to decline “given the circumstances.”
“I cannot, as the leader of the nation’s oldest guardian of free speech, participate in an event in which students believe their voices are excluded,” Ms. Archer wrote.
CUNY graduation fervor comes as many colleges have adapted in recent weeks — or completely canceled — their opening ceremonies after weeks of student protests.
But the New York City School of Public Law, which is the most diverse in the country and has a reputation for encouraging lawyers who work in the interest of the common good, has long been a hotspot for pro-Palestinian activism.
The trial represents the culmination of a simmering conflict over Israel-related policy that has lasted nearly two years.
THE complaint, which was filed in Manhattan federal court late last month, was brought by eight plaintiffs, all law students or soon-to-be graduates of CUNY. He claims the school engaged in viewpoint discrimination and retaliation when it decided to prohibit students from nominating a peer to speak at graduation and from recording or to broadcast the event live, thus breaking with tradition.
These decisions were made in response to the opening speeches of the two previous speakers and reflect a “crackdown on Palestine-related speech,” the complaint states.
“I think for these plaintiffs and their peers, it is essential to expose the injustices and catastrophic state violence that Palestinians in Gaza face,” said Golnaz Fakhimi, legal director of Muslim Advocates, the main organization representing students.
Each year, graduating law students select a member of their class to give a speech, a custom since at least 2016, according to the lawsuit. In 2022, they selected a Palestinian student, who is not named in the lawsuit. His speech included statements critical of Israel and drew the ire of some public officials, who called him anti-Semitic. At that time, a member of the municipal council withdrew a small amount of funding from the law school because of the faculty’s support for a boycott movement against Israel, the lawsuit notes.
Last spring, students chose Fatima Mousa Mohammed, a Yemeni immigrant and activist dedicated to the Palestinian cause, as their spokesperson. Ms. Mohammed’s speech, like the one that preceded it, denounced “Israeli settler colonialism”, but it sparked a storm of criticismmaking Ms Mohammed the subject of months of international media coverage.
Lawmakers criticized Ms. Mohammed’s positions and at least one advocacy group has called out Sudha Setty, the dean of the law faculty, to resign. A few weeks after the speech, Mayor Eric Adams, who spoke at the graduation, condemned the “divisive nature” of the speech. Later, the CUNY chancellor and board of trustees disavowed the speech in a statement. statementcalling it “hate speech.”
In September, Ms. Setty said the 2024 graduation would not include a student speaker, according to notes taken by a student government representative who attended a faculty meeting. In April, students learned that the ceremony would not be broadcast live.
In the past, the school has held commencement ceremonies that did not include student-selected speakers, the law school said.
In a statement, Ms. Setty said the law school was “working hard” to put on a ceremony that honors the achievements of its students and “meets the needs of our entire community.”
“The public controversy surrounding the graduations and the protests we are seeing across the country should not overshadow their incredible accomplishments – the world needs more lawyers who serve the public interest – and we look forward to giving them a happy farewell,” we can read in the press release. said.
The plaintiffs said the school made changes to its usual back-to-school plan because of the content of the previous two speeches, and their claim of violating the First Amendment rests on this point. But a legal expert said such an argument was flimsy and unlikely to succeed.
“I don’t think it’s a strong free speech claim, legally,” said Burt Neuborne, a civil liberties professor and founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice. “I believe that students have no more right to choose their commencement lecturers than they have the right to choose their professors or other participants in university life.”
Since the fall, some law students have asked administrators to reconsider eliminating the speaking period, including in public letters, but those attempts have failed. The plaintiffs also claim that pro-Palestinian activism on campus in the months following October 7 caused administrators to become more stubborn.
“I really think this lawsuit is an opportunity for CUNY to put itself on the right side of history,” said Nusayba Hammad, a third-year Palestinian-American student at CUNY and one of the plaintiffs. “So far, they have chosen the wrong side again and again.”
