Citing safety, USC makes rare cancellation of speech by valedictorian who supported Palestinians

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The University of Southern California canceled a commencement speech by its 2024 valedictorian who has publicly supported Palestinians, citing security concerns, a rare decision that was praised by several pro-Israel groups and lambasted by free speech advocates and the country’s largest Muslim civil rights organization.

Andrew T. Guzman, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs for the private university in Los Angeles, said in a statement Monday that debate over the selection of valedictorian Asna Tabassum to give the May 10 commencement speech took on an “alarming tenor.” Her speaking would have presented “substantial” security risks for the event, which draws 65,000 people to campus, he said.

While Guzman did not specify whether there had been threats, he said that “we cannot ignore the fact that similar risks have led to harassment and even violence at other campuses.”

“The intensity of feelings, fueled by both social media and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, has grown to include many voices outside of USC and has escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement,” Guzman wrote.

The Israel-Hamas war has presented a challenge for colleges under pressure to preserve free speech and open debate, and campuses are expected to be further tested as commencement speeches get underway in the coming weeks.

Universities should resist cancelling events that could be perceived as censorship, especially one as high-profile as a commencement speech, said Zach Greenberg, a first amendment attorney with the national Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression or FIRE. But, if they do, schools must be transparent and specify security concerns “not only as a matter of integrity” but also to warn the public for their own safety, he said.

He expressed concern about other schools buckling to pressure and eroding free speech.

“This is kind of an opening salvo of commencement season,” he said. “It seems to be a pretty clear example of a university canceling an event and censoring a student because of opposition to student views, especially on social media regarding the Gaza conflict.”

Tabassum, who is graduating with a major in biomedical engineering and a minor in resistance to genocide, said she was blindsided by the decision, in a statement provided Tuesday by the Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. University officials told her Monday that there were resources to take appropriate safety measures but they were concerned about their image, she said.

“Anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian voices have subjected me to a campaign of racist hatred because of my uncompromising belief in human rights for all,” she said, adding that she was not aware of any specific threats against her or the university.

“I am both shocked by this decision and profoundly disappointed that the university is succumbing to a campaign of hate meant to silence my voice," she said. "I am not surprised by those who attempt to propagate hatred. I am surprised that my own university — my home for four years — has abandoned me.”

Guzman said the decision was solely about safety and came after consulting the “expert campus safety team.” USC’s associate senior vice president of safety and risk assurance, Erroll G. Southers, is an expert in school violence prevention and a former FBI agent who is also president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, the civilian board that oversees the city's police department.

“To be clear: this decision has nothing to do with freedom of speech,” Guzman's statement read. “There is no free-speech entitlement to speak at a commencement. The issue here is how best to maintain campus security and safety, period.”

At the USC campus on Tuesday, some students expressed disappointment.

One, Isabella Griggs, said “there was no inkling” of Tabassum causing any harm with her words.

“And she’s talking about issues that are important to not only our university and to students, but to the world,” Griggs said.

Another student, Mohammed Zain Shafi Khan, said Tabassum “embodies what it means to be a valedictorian for USC, and to take that away from her — at least the honor that comes attached to it — is extremely disappointing because this is her moment to enjoy.”

The university announced its decision the same day pro-Palestinian demonstrators blocked roadways in Illinois, California, New York and the Pacific Northwest, temporarily shutting down travel into some of the nation’s most heavily used airports, onto the Golden Gate and Brooklyn bridges and on a busy West Coast highway to demand an immediate cease-fire.

Campuses have been a hotbed of protest over the war, which began following Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people. Israel’s responding assault on Gaza has killed as many as 33,800 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry.

The organization EndJewHatred issued a statement Monday night praising USC’s decision.

“Ms. Tabassum’s speech as valedictorian was anticipated to be harmful to Jewish students and even potentially agitate anti-Jewish activists,” the organization said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the cancellation.

“USC cannot hide its cowardly decision behind a disingenuous concern for ‘security,’” the organization's executive director, Hussam Ayloush, said in a statement.

Tabassum, describing herself as a first-generation South Asian American Muslim, said her speech aimed to inspire hope in troubled times.

“By canceling my speech, USC is only caving to fear and rewarding hatred,” she said.

“As your class Valedictorian, I implore my USC classmates to think outside the box — to work towards a world where cries for equality and human dignity are not manipulated to be expressions of hatred,” she said. “I challenge us to respond to ideological discomfort with dialogue and learning, not bigotry and censorship. And I urge us to see past our deepest fears and recognize the need to support justice for all people, including the Palestinian people.”

Watson reported from San Diego. Associated Press journalists Christopher Weber and Eugene Garcia in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

A poetry stage is prepared for the upcoming The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, a free public festival held annually at the University of Southern California campus, in Los Angeles, Tuesday, April 16, 2024. University of Southern California officials have canceled a commencement speech by its 2024 valedictorian, a pro-Palestinian Muslim, citing "substantial risks relating to security and disruption" of the event that draws 65,000 people to campus. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

A person suffering homelessness walks past students outside the University of Southern California campus entrance in Los Angeles on Tuesday, April 16, 2024. University of Southern California officials have canceled a commencement speech by its 2024 valedictorian, a pro-Palestinian Muslim, citing "substantial risks relating to security and disruption" of the event that draws 65,000 people to campus. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

The iconic Tommy Trojan statue stands posed at the University of Southern California campus in Los Angeles, Tuesday, April 16, 2024. University of Southern California officials have canceled a commencement speech by its 2024 valedictorian, a pro-Palestinian Muslim, citing "substantial risks relating to security and disruption" of the event that draws 65,000 people to campus. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

A poster hangs at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering reading "While you study They starve End USC study aboard in Israel" at the USC campus in Los Angeles, Tuesday, April 16, 2024. University of Southern California officials have canceled a commencement speech by its 2024 valedictorian, a pro-Palestinian Muslim, citing "substantial risks relating to security and disruption" of the event that draws 65,000 people to campus. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

The iconic Tommy Trojan statue stands posed at the University of Southern California campus in Los Angeles Tuesday, April 16, 2024. University of Southern California officials have canceled a commencement speech by its 2024 valedictorian, a pro-Palestinian Muslim, citing "substantial risks relating to security and disruption" of the event that draws 65,000 people to campus. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

The emblem for the University of Southern California is mounted at a campus entrance in Los Angeles Tuesday, April 16, 2024. University of Southern California officials have canceled a commencement speech by its 2024 valedictorian, a pro-Palestinian Muslim, citing "substantial risks relating to security and disruption" of the event that draws 65,000 people to campus. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

The name for the University of Southern California is displayed at a campus entrance in Los Angeles Tuesday, April 16, 2024.University of Southern California officials have canceled a commencement speech by its 2024 valedictorian, a pro-Palestinian Muslim, citing "substantial risks relating to security and disruption" of the event that draws 65,000 people to campus. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

FILE - This Tuesday, March 12, 2019 file photo shows the iconic Tommy Trojan statue at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. University of Southern California officials have canceled a commencement speech by its 2024 valedictorian, a pro-Palestinian Muslim, citing “substantial risks relating to security and disruption” of the event that draws 65,000 people to campus. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel ordered the local offices of Qatar's Al Jazeera satellite news network to close Sunday, escalating a long-running feud between the broadcaster and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-line government as Doha-mediated cease-fire negotiations with Hamas hang in the balance.

The extraordinary order, which includes confiscating broadcast equipment, preventing the broadcast of the channel’s reports and blocking its websites, is believed to be the first time Israel has ever shuttered a foreign news outlet.

Al Jazeera went off Israel’s main cable provider in the hours after the order. However, its website and multiple online streaming links still operated Sunday.

The network has reported the Israeli-Hamas war nonstop since the militants' initial cross-border attack Oct. 7 and has maintained 24-hour coverage in the Gaza Strip amid Israel's grinding ground offensive that has killed and wounded members of its own staff. While including on-the-ground reporting of the war's casualties, its Arabic arm often publishes verbatim video statements from Hamas and other militant groups in the region.

“Al Jazeera reporters harmed Israel’s security and incited against soldiers,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “It’s time to remove the Hamas mouthpiece from our country.”

Al Jazeera issued a statement vowing it will “pursue all available legal channels through international legal institutions in its quest to protect both its rights and journalists, as well as the public’s right to information.”

“Israel’s ongoing suppression of the free press, seen as an effort to conceal its actions in the Gaza Strip, stands in contravention of international and humanitarian law,” the network said. “Israel’s direct targeting and killing of journalists, arrests, intimidation and threats will not deter Al Jazeera."

Israeli media said the order allows Israel to block the channel from operating in the country for 45 days.

The Israeli government has taken action against individual reporters over the decades since its founding in 1948, but broadly allows for a rambunctious media scene that includes foreign bureaus from around the world, even from Arab nations. That changed with a law passed last month, which Netanyahu's office says allows the government to take action against a foreign channel seen as “harming the country.”

Israeli Communication Minister Shlomo Karhi later published footage online of authorities raiding a hotel room Al Jazeera had been broadcasting from in east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians hope to one day have for their future state. He said officials seized some of the channel's equipment there.

“We finally are able to stop Al Jazeera’s well-oiled incitement machine that harms the security of the country,” Karhi said.

The ban did not appear to affect the channel’s operations in the occupied West Bank or Gaza Strip, where Israel wields control but which are not sovereign Israeli territory.

The decision threatens to heighten tensions with Qatar at a time when the Doha government is playing a key role in mediation efforts to halt the war in Gaza, along with Egypt and the United States.

Qatar has had strained ties with Netanyahu in particular since he made comments suggesting that Qatar is not exerting enough pressure on Hamas to prompt it to relent in its terms for a truce deal. Qatar hosts Hamas leaders in exile at a political office in Doha.

The sides appear to be close to striking a deal, but multiple previous rounds of talks have ended with no agreement.

In a statement Sunday, Hamas condemned the Israeli government order, calling on international organizations to take measures against Israel.

The Foreign Press Association in Israel criticized the order.

“With this decision, Israel joins a dubious club of authoritarian governments to ban the station,” it said. “This is a dark day for the media.”

Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine director, criticized the Israeli order as “an assault on freedom of the press.”

“Rather than trying to silence reporting on its atrocities in Gaza, the Israeli government should stop committing them,” he added.

Shortly after the government's decision, Cabinet members from the National Unity party criticized its timing, saying it “may sabotage the efforts to finalize the negotiations and stems from political considerations.” The party said that in general, it supported the decision.

Israel has long had a rocky relationship with Al Jazeera, accusing it of bias. Relations took a major downturn nearly two years ago when Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh was killed during an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank.

Those relations further deteriorated following the outbreak of Israel’s war against Hamas on Oct. 7, when the militant group carried out a cross-border attack in southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage. Since then, the Israeli military campaign in Gaza has killed over 34,000 people, according to local health officials there, who don't break figures down into civilians and combatants.

In December, an Israeli strike killed an Al Jazeera cameraman as he reported on the war in southern Gaza. The channel’s bureau chief in Gaza, Wael Dahdouh, was wounded in the same attack. Dahdouh, a correspondent well-known to Palestinians during many wars, later evacuated Gaza but only after Israeli strikes killed his wife, three of his children and a grandson.

Al Jazeera is one of the few international media outlets to remain in Gaza throughout the war, broadcasting bloody scenes of airstrikes and overcrowded hospitals and accusing Israel of massacres.

Criticism of the channel is not new, however. The U.S. government singled out the broadcaster during America’s occupation of Iraq after its 2003 invasion toppled dictator Saddam Hussein and for airing videos of the late al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden.

Al Jazeera has been closed or blocked by other Mideast governments. Most notably in 2013, Egyptian authorities raided a luxury hotel used by Al Jazeera as an operating base after the military takeover that followed mass protests against President Mohammed Morsi.

Three Al Jazeera staff members, Australian Peter Greste, Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian producer Baher Mohamed received 10-year prison sentences, but were released in 2015 following widespread international criticism.

Gambrell reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Jack Jeffrey in Jerusalem contributed.

FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel on Oct. 28, 2023. Netanyahu pledged Tuesday, April 30 to launch an incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are sheltering from the almost 7-month-long war, just as cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas appear to be gaining steam. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)