Harvard Divinity School refused to publish this year’s commencement speech after one of its speakers went off-script to acknowledge the genocide in Gaza, as The Intercept reported last month. Now, The Intercept is publishing recent Divinity School graduate Zehra Imam’s part of the speech for the first time.
The suppression of the speech came as Harvard University received public praise for refusing to abide with demands from the Trump administration in its stated crusade against antisemitism at the nation’s universities, which the administration has used to justify a crackdown on speech advocating for Palestinian rights. Earlier this week, Trump again threatened to cut Harvard’s federal funding — this time, all of it — after the administration found that the school had violated the Civil Rights Act and tolerated antisemitism on campus.
The school had “been in some cases deliberately indifferent, and in others has been a willful participant in anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students, faculty, and staff,” Trump’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism argued in a letter to Harvard President Alan Garber on Monday. Harvard said it disagreed with the administration’s findings and took allegations of antisemitism on campus seriously.
It was the latest development in a monthslong, multiagency battle between President Donald Trump and Harvard over his sweeping demands for changes at the school, including an end to all practices designed to address diversity and equity, censorship of its curriculum, and punishment of pro-Palestine student protesters. The school has been hailed for its proclaimed resistance to these efforts and for its lawsuit against the Trump administration over the president’s order to bar would-be international students, which a judge indefinitely blocked earlier this week.
In private, however, Harvard has quietly capitulated to Trump’s threats. Students and staff at the Divinity School who spoke to The Intercept connected the school’s refusal to publish the commencement speech to its efforts to dismantle a program that offered a trip to the West Bank and coursework on Israel and Palestine, among other topics. While the U.S. government and much of the mainstream media fixates on Harvard’s handling of antisemitism, findings from a concurrent investigation into anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian bias at the school have received far less attention. In January, Harvard settled a lawsuit alleging discrimination by the school against Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students.
Harvard declined to publish the video of Imam’s speech due to “security concerns,” as The Intercept previously reported, and made a password-protected version temporarily available to users with Harvard logins. Students and staff at the Divinity School called the decision unusual, noting that past speeches had been made public. Several raised concerns that the school was forsaking its pledges to address anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian bias on campus in the name of fighting antisemitism.
Imam told The Intercept that her goal was to shift attention to unlivable conditions that Palestinian people continue to suffer in Gaza, and said it was the responsibility of Divinity School students studying religion and the world not to look away. Despite Harvard’s decision not to publish its video of Imam’s speech, clips quickly circulated online and on social media. The Intercept has chosen to publish the video and full transcript of her speech, which discusses centuries-old Islamic history alongside the contemporary experiences of Palestinian students and children.
