By Talia Mullin / Original to ScheerPost
Over a week ago I sat just beyond the fenced-out free speech area and among my peers for our graduation commencement. Since then I have been trying to make sense of all that took place in the final months of my college experience. From learning, singing, dancing, and celebrating student solidarity with Palestine at our peaceful student encampment to multiple unprovoked violent clashes with our campus Department of Public Safety and LAPD, there has been a lot to process. After weeks of controversy, cancellation and escalation, arrests, expulsions and suspensions, the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism graduation ceremony took place without a problem.
Seeing as the administration canceled the main graduation ceremony, citing unsubstantiated safety concerns, only individual school ceremonies were able to take place within the walls of USC behind the additional security check-points formed by zip-tied chain-linked fences that surrounded the entire interior of the campus.
After our bags were searched and entrance tickets double checked, I was lucky enough to enjoy this special moment with my family and closest friends without any of the bogeyman safety risks materializing, despite the administration’s best efforts to get us to believe they were legitimate. It appears more likely these “safety concerns” were actually directed at quieting my peers and me, who refuse to be silent about the 76 years of ruthless oppression endured by the Palestinians, defined by the 35,000+ lives lost in the last seven months to Israel’s brutality.
For weeks leading up to, and following the cancellation of Asna Tabassaum’s valedictory address, students on USC’s campus, and college campuses across the world have continued to protest the administrative failure to talk about Palestine, divest from war profiteering and protect their students and their right to free speech.
Due to the failure of top administrators to support the right to free speech and the right to assemble — both enshrined in our Constitution and denied when the LAPD was called to our campus — a contentious nature surrounded the event they did allow us to have, causing me, and many other students, to feel that the whole ceremony was a bit trivial considering the mass atrocities taking place in Palestine and the administration’s refusal to include Palestine in any conversation … but I suppose their designated free speech area would not be big enough to accommodate all those who would wish to participate in such a discussion.
These “free speech areas” (they were said to be multiple though I only saw one) – which were just as ridiculous as they sound – were meant to placate the demands by students in USC’s solidarity encampment. This overwhelmingly peaceful, educational, and hopeful protest was subject to not one, but two, altercations with LAPD, cordially invited by the president of the university, Carol Folt. A police force that can’t escape its corrupt and brutal past is welcomed, but our right to “free speech” is restricted, even on our graduation day? Conveniently, this free speech area was located outside of the chain-link fence and nowhere near any commencement event where students were warned that disruptors would be removed.
Despite complicated feelings about attending the ceremony as horrific crimes against humanity continue in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem, I saw it as my opportunity to show support for the Palestinian cause. I wanted to defy an administration that went to extremes to prevent conversations about Palestine from happening on our campus and distort the intentions/actions of students or faculty that try to initiate them.
For me, this meant I had to have my entire family show up with some accent of Palestine in their wardrobe. Aside from some dirty looks, my family and I faced no push-back for our various forms of solidarity such as keffiyehs, Palestine sashes, shirts and buttons, which was a shock after such aggressive escalation towards student protests on campus in the past month.
Along with my family’s attire, I personally chose to wear a keffiyeh and embroidered “Free Palestine” on the back of my stoll and waved a small Palestinian flag I had kept hidden until I accepted my degree certificate on stage. Not only was this meant to show solidarity with the Palestinian people, but it was my way of honoring all the Palestinian students who may have been killed before they got their chance to walk across a stage and accept their own diploma.
Administration may have called for LAPD to raid the student encampment without ever truly considering negotiations with organizers, scared faculty and students alike into silence, and prevented Asna from having her moment to speak, but symbols like that of Palestinian resistance are not so easily silenced.
Outside the free speech area, there is much being left unsaid. The Dean of Annenberg, Willow Bay, gave an opening welcome speech, which did not give the impression that she could fully address all that has occurred on our campus, nor briefly refer to what is currently taking place in Palestine. It is not to say that she was silenced but rather said many things without saying what many of us wanted to hear.
Dean Bay opened her speech with “… I think you know, when I say I’m really happy to see you all here – my very special class of 2024 – this year, I really mean it. I know this journey to commencement has come with challenges we might not have expected to encounter, and arguments we didn’t anticipate considering, and maybe even some emotions we never expected to confront, yet, you are here. And here we are together navigating this road, embracing the joy and complexity of this day, praying for peace, hoping to heal divides, and looking forward to your future. A future of impact, which we know you all are capable of achieving.”
I appreciate that the dean at least acknowledged there was tension and reason to be thankful that our ceremony could take place; this is more than we have heard from the officials who made the cancellations. She was spot on by describing these unnamed events and arguments as something that those who are apathetic to the genocide occurring in Palestine did not anticipate considering, nor emotions they were ever expected to confront.
However, for the rest of us who have been engaged with the Palestinian struggle and resistance, these words felt condescending. We have been dealing with these emotions and begging top administration like President Folt and Provost Andrew Guzman to take these emotions seriously for the past seven months, calling for divestment from Israel and for denouncement of its brutal response and treatment of Palestinians. We are all too aware that just praying for peace and difficult-to-impossible healing of divides has gotten us nowhere, especially without having the conversations necessary among all sides.
The dean continued, “Yes, we know you have lost and missed out on, and that’s real and true, but remember just how much you’ve gained,” which felt uncouth to many of us. The losses to which she is referring were 2020 high school graduations due to a global pandemic that killed millions, and then our main USC commencement ceremony, which was due to the failure of our top administrators to protect our valedictorian as well as the students protesting genocide, instead placing the blame on them for stoking “safety and security” concerns that were non existent until police were called in.
Nearing the conclusion of her speech, the dean spoke of a very special skill that we had gained while at USC Annenberg that may not be on our resumes but will guide us into this “turbulent future,” this skill being the ability “to listen actively; looking for information and insight; to listen for the facts; to listen for the truth; to listen critically for what’s not being said as much as for what is; to listen with humility, not to search for grievance but to broaden your perspective; to listen with compassion and empathy, putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. … in this moment, that skill of listening has never been more important.” While most audience members would agree that listening is a very important skill, and certainly one taught by Annenberg faculty, including the dean herself, it does not seem to be valued by higher-ups.
The school’s trustees and top administrators have been making the calls about what kind of listening will be done and where they will allow students and faculty to speak freely, which feels quite contradictory to what the founding mission of the school for communication and journalism has been since its creation. The dean went on to say that we would use this skill of listening to fulfill the vision of our school’s founder, Walter Annenberg, “who charged us to be of service to all people. Use it to build trust and build community, and to strengthen and support democracy. I suspect we might be needing some of the months ahead.” I suspect the founder of Annenberg would be disappointed, not by Willow Bay who at least had the strength to express concern and understanding for our class’s frustration, but with the schoolwide administration whose missteps will certainly require the rebuilding of trust and community to correct.
It is quite disappointing that the indifference of the school’s top administration could have such a glaring impact on Annenberg’s ability to fulfill its role. How can you boast being a university with a top school in the U.S. for communication and journalism when there is little to no communication about the most severe issues facing our world today, and the LAPD is called and restricts student journalists’ access as they raid a peaceful student encampment? How can you stand at the podium and lecture students about the importance of listening “in turbulent times” without the ability of acknowledging what makes these times so difficult? How can you claim to be a leading institution of higher education but silence future leaders like our valedictorian? These were just a few of the questions going through my mind as I sat listening to everything not being said at my commencement ceremony and watching a genocide take place through social media on my iPhone.
I could write a book about the administrative failures of many universities in the U.S. in the past seven months, but I would rather use this moment to highlight what is apparently meant to be kept within the borders of a “free speech area.” I had the privilege of attending and finishing my university education at USC and pursuing a career in journalism with a degree from a nationally top-ranked communication program, despite the turmoil resulting from an unwillingness of those in charge to learn something from their students who clearly were well taught by their faculty. Meanwhile, there are no universities left standing in the Gaza Strip following the demolition of Israa University on Jan. 17. I have been able to watch on the screen of my phone the horrors taking place whilst continuing my education, but the same cannot be said for more than 15,000 Palestinian children who will never reach university.
Additionally, at least 105 journalists have been killed while trying to report on the atrocities taking place. Over 100 people have been killed pursuing the professional field that I have entered, despite their practice seeming to take place in another reality completely.
I write to honor those who have been lost, or what they have lost on their own journeys of pursuing the truth. This is the future of impact I hope to achieve.
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