Female MIT Student Barred for Pro-Palestinian Speech

A female MIT student was barred from a graduation ceremony on Friday after delivering a pro-Palestinian speech during a commencement event. The barred female student, Meghna Vemuri, was also the 2025 class president of MIT.

Meghna is the latest student facing discipline after using a graduation as a forum to protest Israel’s war in Gaza inside a university-wide ceremony on Thursday at the MIT campus in Cambridge. Meghna also recommended students who protest for Palestinian rights and denounced MIT’s ties with the state of Israel.

Last year, international media reported that, based on U.S. Department of Education data, MIT reported receiving $2.8 million in grants, gifts, and contracts from Israeli entities between 2020 to 2024.

“MIT supports free expression but stands by its decision, which was in response to the individual deliberately and repeatedly misleading commencement organisers and leading a protest from the stage,” said a spokesperson from the school in a statement to national media. The school also went on to say that Meghna will receive her degree in Georgia, the place she grew up.

“I see no need for me to walk across the stage of an institution that is complicit in this genocide,” wrote Meghna, stating that she was not disappointed to miss Friday’s ceremony.