At MIT and Yale, ‘Graduation’s Ruined’

Let's see here. The douche bag who gave the speech was Senior Class President elected by the douche bag students the douche bag admissions department recruited for admission.

Start to see a trend here...other than the fact that I have a foul mouth?

How about firing the entire admission department and replace with some folks who don't have their heads buried up their ass. Sorry, monkey.

At MIT and Yale, ‘Graduation’s Ruined’

Rhetoric from the encampments invades commencement day.

By Sahar Juliet Tartak, WSJ

June 17, 2025

The same university administrators who allowed extremists to infiltrate their campuses also welcomed them to commencement. For two years the class of 2025 has been subjected to bullying by Hamas supporters. Did they—and their families—also have to suffer while collecting their diplomas?

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, kaffiyeh-clad student speaker Megha Vemuri claimed MIT had suppressed campus activists even as she railed against “genocidal” Israeli soldiers attempting “to wipe Palestinians off the face of the earth.” Administrators let her speak knowing that an antisemitic rant was likely. Ms. Vemuri, the 2025 class president, has an extremist record. She ran a self-described “revolutionary” student publication that published an homage to Aaron Bushnell, who in 2024 committed suicide by self-immolation outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington while shouting “Free Palestine.”

Administrators had promised concerned faculty and students that they had a plan in place to handle potential disruptions. But they took no action to interrupt Ms. Vemuri’s rant or remove those in the crowd waving Palestinian flags and shouting, “MIT has blood on its hands.” The most President Sally Kornbluth could muster was a weak call for forbearance from the podium: “Folks, at MIT we value free expression, but today’s about the graduates.”

New graduate Jennifer Mallah said she and her friends anticipated the disruptions. A Lebanese-American who majored in mechanical engineering and computer science, Ms. Mallah was nonetheless disappointed by the politicization of the ceremony. When Ms. Vemuri began her tirade, Ms. Mallah thought, “Graduation’s ruined.”

Yale’s administration evidently approved Class Day speaker Molly Smith’s speech comparing this year’s anti-Israel encampment to a 1980s campus protest against apartheid in South Africa. As she spoke, large video screens displayed photos of the earlier protests. Ms. Smith lamented “Yale’s investment in weapons used in the Israel-Hamas war” and the arrest of classmates “for protesting on their own campus.”

Ms. Smith didn’t mention the harassment and assault of Jewish students (including me) during the campus encampment. She failed to note that her peers called for a “global intifada” and the genocide of Jews as they tore down and tried to burn an American flag flying over Yale’s war memorial.

Yale’s ceremony was poisoned by politics. The anti-American and antisemitic rhetoric came packaged with the usual land acknowledgments and gratuitous proclamations about climate change, equity and abortion. Graduate Mitchell Dubin told me his family was so disgusted that they left early, missing the chance to see him collect an academic honor.

Cowering university administrators at MIT and Yale missed an opportunity. With modest effort they could have ensured pleasant commencement celebrations for students and their families. It’s too late for the class of 2025, whose memories are likely spoiled. I hope I’ll get a better deal when I graduate next year.

Ms. Tartak is a Robert L. Bartley Fellow at the Journal and a Yale student.