MIT class president barred from graduation after pro-Palestine speech

[Source]
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's 2025 class president was barred from attending her graduation ceremony on Friday after delivering a pro-Palestinian speech that criticized the university's ties to Israel during a commencement event the day prior.
What she said
Megha Vemuri took the stage at Thursday's OneMIT commencement ceremony wearing a keffiyeh over her graduation gown. During the Indian-origin graduate's four-minute speech, she praised students who protested the war in Gaza and condemned MIT's financial ties to Israel. 'Right now, while we prepare to graduate and move forward with our lives, there are no universities left in Gaza,' Vemuri said. 'We are watching Israel try to wipe out Palestine off the face of the Earth, and it is a shame that MIT is a part of it.'
Vemuri specifically criticized MIT's research connections, stating that 'Israel is the only foreign military with which MIT has active research ties.' MIT reportedly received $2.8 million in grants, gifts and contracts from Israeli entities between 2020 and 2024. She concluded her speech by invoking MIT's tradition of turning class rings outward, saying graduates 'carry with us the stamp of the MIT name, the same name that is directly complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.'
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The aftermath
MIT President Sally Kornbluth attempted to calm the crowd immediately after Vemuri's speech, saying, 'At MIT, we believe in freedom of expression. But today is about the graduates.' University officials later informed Vemuri she could not attend Friday's undergraduate ceremony and was barred from campus until it concluded. MIT said the speech differed from what was submitted in advance, with the university claiming Vemuri chose to 'deliberately and repeatedly' mislead Commencement organizers and lead a protest from the stage.
The big picture
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Vemuri's ban reflects growing tensions at universities where students have transformed graduation ceremonies into platforms for Gaza-related protests. These events unfold as universities navigate pressure from the Trump administration, which has been cutting federal funding for research and launching investigations into DEI programs. In an X post, House Speaker Mike Johnson called Vemuri's speech 'Ignorant. Hateful. Morally bankrupt,' urging parents to 'avoid MIT & the Ivy League at all costs.'
Despite the controversy, Vemuri will receive her degree by mail and expressed no regrets, telling CNN she sees 'no need for me to walk across the stage of an institution that is complicit in this genocide.' The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned MIT's decision, with Massachusetts executive director Tahirah Amatul-Wadud saying, 'MIT must respect academic freedom and respect the voices of its students, not punish and intimidate those who speak out against genocide and in support of Palestinian humanity.'
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Vox

17 minutes ago

• Vox

This time it's Trump's war

is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map. US President Donald Trump addresses the nation, alongside US Vice President JD Vance, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, from the White House in Washington, DC on June 21, 2025. Carlos Barria/Pool/AFP via Getty Images Donald Trump claimed during his 2024 campaign for president that America had fought 'no wars' during his first presidency, and that he was the first president in 72 years who could say that. This was not, strictly speaking, true. In his first term, Trump intensified the air war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, ordered airstrikes against Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime in response to chemical weapons use, and escalated a little-noticed counterinsurgency campaign in Somalia. But in those cases, Trump could say, with some justification, that he was just dealing with festering crises he had inherited from Barack Obama. Likewise, the president has repeatedly claimed that the wars in Gaza and Ukraine never would have happened had he been president when they broke out, rather than Joe Biden. That's a counterfactual that is impossible to prove, and he may have been overly optimistic in his promises to quickly negotiate an end to both those conflicts, but it's fair to say that both are wars Trump inherited rather than chose. This time, it's different. This time, it's Trump's war. On Saturday night, the United States bombed three nuclear sites in Iran at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan, ending weeks of speculation about whether the US military would join the Israeli war on Iran that began more than a week ago. The past few days in Washington have felt a bit like the battles over intelligence in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, but run in fast-forward. Rather than pressuring intelligence agencies to justify his preferred course of action, Trump has simply overruled them. Rather than building a case before Congress and the UN for the need to act, he's simply ignored them. Trump argued that Iran brought the attack on themselves by not taking the deal he was offering — but negotiations were ongoing at the time Trump abandoned the diplomatic path. Trump endorsed the Israeli assessment that war was necessary because new information showed Iran was 'very close to having a weapon.' But this contradicts the very recent statements from his own intelligence agencies and director of national intelligence. According to the Wall Street Journal's reporting, officials in these agencies were not convinced by Israel's new evidence that something dramatic had changed in Iran's nuclear program. It also contradicts Trump's own statements from earlier this month when he publicly discouraged Israel from attacking Iran, saying it would derail his efforts to negotiate a new nuclear deal. It's hard to overstate just how fast the Trump administration's policy has shifted. Just a month ago, Trump appeared to be giving Netanyahu's government the cold shoulder, pursuing direct diplomacy with Israel's staunchest enemies – including Iran – and cozying up to governments in the Gulf that plainly had no appetite for a new war. Now Trump has not only endorsed Netanyahu's war; he has joined it, and boasted in his brief statement from the White House on Saturday that the two had worked as a team like 'perhaps no team has ever worked before.' He ended his speech with 'God bless Israel' along with 'God bless America.' Tonight was also a major blow to those on the right, as well as some on the left, who hoped that the Trump administration would usher in either a new era of military restraint or a shift in priorities away from the Middle East toward China. (The US has now relocated military assets from Asia for this war.) There's still a lot we still don't know, but it's fair at this point to say that this is a war of Trump's choosing. Trump's extraordinary gamble In his statement from the White House on Saturday night, Trump said that the operation had been a 'spectacular military success' and that the enrichment facilities had been 'totally obliterated.' For the moment, we don't have corroborating evidence of that. Israel had mostly avoided striking these sites itself. Only the US has the powerful GBU-57 'bunker buster' bombs that can destroy Iran's most security nuclear sites, particularly the underground uranium enrichment facility at Fordow, and only the US has the aircraft that can carry them. US officials told the New York Times that US bombers dropped a dozen bunker busters on Fordow on Saturday. Many experts believe the facility would be difficult to destroy and require multiple strikes, even with those bombs. Doubts about whether Fordow could be destroyed were reportedly one reason why Trump hesitated in ordering these strikes. In his statement, Trump also implied that this was a one-off operation for now. Speaking of the pilots who dropped the bombs, Trump said, 'hopefully we will no longer need their services at this capacity' but also threatened that if Iran did not 'make peace' then 'future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.' He added: 'There are many targets left.' The hope appears to be that Iran will now be forced to cut a deal to entirely give up its nuclear program. But an Iranian regime mindful of its own legitimacy is also likely to retaliate in some form, possibly by targeting some of the roughly 40,000 US troops deployed around the Middle East. The hope may be that these will be limited tit-for-tat strikes like those that followed the US assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani in 2020, though subsequent assessments have found that those attacks did more damage than was initially thought and could easily have killed far more US troops. In any event, the Iranian regime is far more desperate now, and once the missiles start flying, it could get very easy for things to escalate out of control. If Iran has any remaining enrichment infrastructure, either at these sites or hidden elsewhere throughout the country, the country's leaders may now feel far less hesitation about rushing to build a bomb. There was long a view that Iran's leaders preferred to remain a 'threshold nuclear state' — working toward a bomb without actually building one. In this view, they believed that their growing capacity to build a weapon gave them leverage, while not actually trying to build one avoided US and Israeli intervention. That logic is now obsolete. It's also not clear that Israel simply wants nuclear concessions from the Iranian regime. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that new intelligence about Iran's nuclear capabilities was the reason for starting this war, it's been clear both from the Israeli government's rhetoric and choice of targets that this is a war against the Islamic Republic itself, and that regime change may be the ultimate goal. Trump didn't mention regime change in his statement, but he has now committed American military power to that Israeli war. So far, this war has been characterized by stunning Israeli tactical successes, as well as the seeming impotence of Iran and its once vaunted network of regional proxies in its response. (Though it's unclear how long Israel's air defense system can keep up if Iranian strikes continue at this pace.) This may have emboldened a president who has backed off of actions like this in the past, convincing him that striking Iran's nuclear program now would be effective and that the blowback would be manageable.

Atlantic

24 minutes ago

• Atlantic

The United States Bombed Iran. Now What?

President Donald Trump has done what he swore he would not do: involve the United States in a war in the Middle East. His supporters will tie themselves in knots (as Vice President J. D. Vance did last week) trying to jam the square peg of Trump's promises into the round hole of his actions. And many of them may avoid calling this 'war' at all, even though that's what Trump himself called it tonight. They will want to see it as a quick win against an obstinate regime that will eventually declare bygones and come to the table. But whether bombing Iran was a good idea or a bad idea—and it could turn out to be either, or both—it is war by any definition of the term, and something Trump had vowed he would avoid. So what's next? Before considering the range of possibilities, it's important to recognize how much we cannot know at this moment. The president's statement tonight was a farrago of contradictions: He said, for example, that the main Iranian nuclear sites were 'completely and totally obliterated'—but it will take time to assess the damage, and he has no way of knowing this. He claimed that the Iranian program has been destroyed—but added that there are still 'many targets' left. He said that Iran could suffer even more in the coming days—but the White House has reportedly assured Iran through backchannels that these strikes were, basically, a one-and-done, and that no further U.S. action is forthcoming. (In a strange moment, he added: 'I want to just say, we love you, God, and we love our great military.' Presidents regularly ask God to bless the American nation and its military forces—as Trump did in his next utterance—but it was a bit unnerving to see a commander in chief order a major military action and then declare how much 'we' love the Creator.) Only one outcome is certain: Hypocrisy in the region and around the world will reach galactic levels as nations wring their hands and silently pray that the B-2s carrying the bunker-buster bombs did their job. Beyond that, the most optimistic view is that the introduction of American muscle in this war will produce a humiliating end to Iran's long standing nuclear ambitions, enable more political disorder in Iran, and finally create the conditions for the fall of the mullahs. This may have been the Israeli plan from the start: Despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's warnings about the imminence of an Iranian nuclear weapons capability and the need to engage in preemption, this was a preventive war. The Israelis could not destroy sites such as Fordow without the Americans. Israeli military actions suggest that Netanyahu was trying to increase the chances of regime change in Tehran, while making a side bet on dragging Trump into the fray and outsourcing the tougher nuclear targets to the United States. The very worst outcome is the polar opposite of the optimistic case. In this bleak alternative, the Air Force either didn't find, or couldn't destroy, all of the key parts of the Iranian program; the Iranians then try to sprint across the finish line to a bomb. In the meantime, Tehran lashes out against U.S. targets in the region and closes the Straits of Hormuz. The Iranian opposition fades in importance as angry Iranian citizens take their government's part. One dangerous possibility in this pessimistic scenario is that the Iranians do real damage to American assets or kill a number of U.S. servicepeople, and Trump, confused and enraged, tries to widen his war against a country more than twice the size of Iraq. Perhaps the most likely outcome, however, is more mixed. The Iranian program may not be completely destroyed, but if the intelligence was accurate and the bombers hit their targets, Tehran's nuclear clock has likely been set back years. (This in itself is a good thing; whether it is worth the risks Trump has taken is another question.) The Iranian people will likely rally around the flag and the regime, but the real question is whether that effect will last. The Iranian regime will be wounded, but will likely survive; the nuclear program will be delayed, but will likely continue; the region will become more unstable but is unlikely to erupt into a full-blown war involving the United States. But plenty of wild cards are in the deck. First, as strategists and military planners always warn, the 'enemy gets a vote.' The Iranians may respond in ways the U.S. does not expect. The classic wargaming mistake is to assume that your opponent will respond in ways that fit nicely with your own plans and capabilities. But the Iranians have had a long time to think about this eventuality; they may have schemes ready that the U.S. has not foreseen. (Why not spread around radiological debris, for example, and then blame the Americans for a near-disaster?) Trump has issued a warning to Iran not to react, but what might count as 'reacting?' Second, we cannot know the subsequent effects of an American attack. For now, other Middle Eastern regimes may be relieved to see Iran's nuclear clock turned back. But if the Iranian regime survives and continues even a limited nuclear program, those same nations may sour on what they will see as an unsuccessful plan hatched in Jerusalem and carried out by Washington. Diplomacy elsewhere will likely suffer. The Russians have been pounding Ukraine with even greater viciousness than usual all week, and now may wave away the last of Trump's feckless attempts to end the war. Other nations might see American planes flying over Iran and think that the North Koreans had the right idea all along: Assemble a few crude nuclear weapons as fast as you can to deter further attempts to end your regime. Finally, the chances for misperception and accidents are now higher than they were yesterday. In 1965, the United States widened the war in Southeast Asia after two purported attacks from North Vietnam; the Americans were not sure at the time that both of them had actually happened, and as it turns out, one of them probably did not. The region, moreover, is full of opportunities for screw-ups and mistakes: If Trump continues action against Iran, he will need excellent intelligence and tight organization at the Pentagon. And this is where the American strikes were really a gamble: They were undertaken by a White House national security team staffed by unqualified appointees, some of whom—including the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense himself—Trump has reportedly frozen out of his inner circle. (Given that those agencies are run by Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth, it is both terrifying and a relief to know that they have no real influence.) The American defense and intelligence communities are excellent, but they can only function for so long without competent leadership. Trump has had preternatural luck as a president: He has survived scandals, major policy failures, and even impeachment, events that would have ended other American planes dropped their payloads and returned home safely. So he might skate past this war, even if it will be hard to explain to the MAGA faithful who believed him, as they always do, that he was the peace candidate. But perhaps the biggest and most unpredictable gamble Trump took in bombing Iran was to send American forces into harm's way in the Middle East with a team that was never supposed to be in charge of an actual war.

32 minutes ago

Trump said he was giving Iran a window to come to the table. He struck 2 days later.

It was just on Thursday that President Donald Trump said he would decide "within the next two weeks" on whether to order a U.S. military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities -- ostensibly to give diplomacy a chance, at least temporarily. 'Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks,' Trump said in a statement read to reporters by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. On Friday, asked by a reporter to explain his thinking, he responded it was to give time for the Iranians to "come to their senses." The president also dismissed the talks held in Geneva Friday between European diplomats and Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, playing down the already low expectations for a breakthrough. "They didn't help," Trump said of the discussions. "Iran doesn't want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this one." He added, "we are ready, willing and able and have been speaking to Iran and we'll see what happens." When a reporter asked, "Does Iran have two weeks or could you strike before that? Are you essentially giving them a two-week timeline?" Trump answered, "Well I'm giving them a period of time. We're going to see what that period of time is. But I'm giving them a period of time, and I would say two weeks would be the maximum." In recent days, Iran has rebuffed a standing offer from the U.S to resume nuclear negotiations. The president's announcement Thursday about a possible delay in hitting Iran frustrated Israeli officials, who have been privately pushing their case for U.S. military involvement for months, according to officials familiar with the matter. Meanwhile, as sharp differences between Israeli and American assessments on Iran's nuclear abilities came to the forefront, Trump also showcased distrust for his own intelligence community, including his own director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. On Friday, Trump was asked about Gabbard's testimony to Congress in March that the U.S. assessed that Iran was not "building" a nuclear weapon and that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003. "She's wrong," Trump said flatly. Shortly after Trump spoke, Gabbard criticized the news media, posting on X, "America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalize the assembly. President Trump has been clear that can't happen, and I agree." Speaking to the nation late Saturday night -- about two hours after he announced the strikes -- Trump said, "Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier."