MIT bans Indian-American student from attending graduation event after pro-Palestine speech

Megha Vemuri (image source: LinkedIn)

Megha Vemuri, an Indian-American people president astatine Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who gave a politically charged pro-Palestine code astatine a graduation ceremonial was banned by the institute.

Vemuri was reportedly banned from attending the undergraduate commencement ceremonial connected Friday, May 30, 2025. 

MIT Chancellor Melissa Nobles reportedly informed Vemuri via email that she and her household were barred from field for astir of Friday, citing that Vemuri ‘deliberately and repeatedly misled Commencement organisers’ and violated MIT’s rules by starring a ‘protest from the stage’, disrupting the ceremony. 

Vemuri disputed the characterisation of her code arsenic a protestation and called the prohibition an ‘overreach’.

During the graduation ceremonial connected Thursday, Vemuri said “MIT wants escaped Palestine,” from the signifier and the assemblage waved Palestinian flags successful solidarity.

Her code comes amid the ongoing unrest successful the US implicit the warfare successful Gaza and assemblage connections to defence and probe institutions.

She went connected to accidental that It is nary concealed that astatine this time, world institutions crossed the state are ‘shrouded successful a acheronian unreality of uncertainty’. She besides remarked that ‘there is simply a batch of fearfulness successful galore of our hearts’.

Vemuri noted that past outpouring MIT’s undergraduate assemblage and postgraduate pupil national voted ‘overwhelmingly’ to chopped ties with the “genocidal Israeli military”.

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Indian-American MIT pupil delivers pro-Palestine code astatine graduation