Another Profile in Courage: MIT’s Megha Vemuri Banned From Commencement Ceremony for Advocating Free Palestine

As graduation season swept across American universities in 2024 and 2025, a new generation of Indian American student leaders emerged as powerful voices for Palestinian solidarity, transforming commencement ceremonies from celebratory rituals into platforms for political conscience. These students, often at significant personal cost, chose to use their moments in the spotlight to challenge their institutions’ policies and advocate for what they viewed as human rights imperatives.

The most dramatic confrontation came at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on May 29, 2025, when class president Megha Vemuri transformed what was expected to be a traditional presidential address into a powerful indictment of her university’s ties to what she termed “the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.”

Vemuri, a Computer Science, Neuroscience, and Linguistics student who also served as a research assistant at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and led MIT Written Revolution, delivered a speech that deviated entirely from what she had submitted to university officials. Wearing a red keffiyeh over her graduation robe, she directly addressed her classmates with the declaration: “You showed the world that MIT wants a free Palestine.”

The speech led to immediate consequences. MIT banned Vemuri from the main graduation ceremony, with university spokesperson Kimberly Allen stating that she “deliberately and repeatedly mislead Commencement organizers and led a protest from the stage, disrupting an important Institute ceremony.”

The students wasted no time in expressing how they felt about banning Vemuri. “Students erupted in jeers Friday as MIT Chancellor Melissa Nobles delivered her graduation speech to the Class of 2025. The protests were in support of Megha Vemuri, the class president who was banned from the morning’s undergraduate ceremonies after inserting pro-Palestine remarks into her address the day prior,” the Boston Globe reported.

In her speech, Vemuri specifically called out MIT’s institutional collaborations with companies that she claimed sell weapons to Israel, including “Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest military contractor, as well as Maersk, Lockheed Martin, and Caterpillar.” She argued that these partnerships granted “genocide profiteers privileged access to MIT talent and expertise.”

The speech resonated with many of her fellow graduates, who responded with cheers and applause, with some holding up Palestinian flags. Vemuri concluded by leading the traditional MIT class ring turning ceremony, but reframed it as a moment of recognition of complicity: “We will carry with us the stamp of the MIT name, the same name that is directly complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.”

Harvard’s Shruthi Kumar

A year earlier, at Harvard University’s 2024 commencement, another Indian American student made headlines for going off-script in solidarity with Palestinian protesters. Shruthi Kumar, an Indian American from Nebraska, who was chosen to deliver the English commencement remarks for the undergraduate class, said, “As I stand here today, I must take a moment to recognize my peers—the 13 undergraduates in the class of 2024 who will not graduate today.”

Kumar’s background reveals a student deeply committed to public service and debate. She was named the 2019-2020 Voice of Democracy National First Place Winner with a speech on “What Makes America Great,” winning a $30,000 college scholarship and sponsored by VFW Post 1581 in Omaha, Nebraska.

Kumar told NBC News that she had written and practiced the speech over the course of a few months with the help of a committee of other students and faculty. Her speech, “The Power of Not Knowing,” was selected by the university over dozens of others. But the evening before graduation day, she made the decision to add unscripted remarks. Midway through her speech, she pulled out a piece of paper with off-script remarks from her sleeve.

Kumar’s intervention was more measured than Vemuri’s direct challenge, but equally pointed in its criticism of Harvard’s treatment of pro-Palestinian student protesters. Her original speech theme about embracing uncertainty took on new meaning as she demonstrated the courage to speak truth to power at a crucial moment.

The actions of Vemuri and Kumar were part of a larger wave of student activism during the 2024-2025 academic year. New York University said it is withholding the diploma of a student who condemned “genocide” in Gaza while delivering a graduation speech Wednesday – a move the university called a violation of the student’s commitment to comply with school rules. Logan Rozos, a New York University student commencement speaker, denounces “atrocities currently happening in Palestine” during his talk, May 14, 2025.

The Cost of Conscience

The institutional responses to these speeches reveal the tensions between universities’ stated commitments to free expression and their desire to control the narrative at high-profile events. While MIT explicitly banned Vemuri from graduation ceremonies, Harvard took no punitive action against Kumar, perhaps reflecting different institutional cultures or the relative restraint of Kumar’s approach.

This marks the second time in a week a student has faced institutional scrutiny for commencement remarks on Gaza: NYU is withholding the diploma of a student who also criticized Israel during his graduation speech.

The pattern suggests that universities are increasingly willing to take disciplinary action against students who use graduation platforms for unauthorized political speech, particularly regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Representing a Generation’s Values

Both Vemuri and Kumar represent a generation of Indian American students who see their academic achievements as inseparable from broader questions of social justice. Their willingness to risk their standing with their institutions reflects a broader shift among young Americans, particularly students of color, who increasingly view silence on global human rights issues as complicity.

Their speeches also demonstrate how diaspora communities are engaging with international conflicts, with these students drawing on their experiences as minorities in America to express solidarity with Palestinians whom they view as facing oppression.

The fact that both students are Indian American is particularly significant, as it highlights how students from immigrant communities are using their platforms to speak out on international issues, potentially drawing on their families’ experiences with colonialism, displacement, or marginalization.

The responses from MIT and Harvard administrators reveal the challenges universities face in balancing free speech principles with event management and donor relations. MIT President Sally Kornbluth took the stage immediately after, expressing her disapproval of Vemuri’s speech, saying “At MIT, we value freedom of expression. But today is about the graduates, so it’s time for me to charge you all. There is a time and a place to express yourselves, and you will have many, many years to do it.”

This tension between institutional control and student expression is likely to continue as more students view graduation ceremonies not just as personal celebrations but as opportunities to make political statements about issues they view as moral imperatives.

A New Model of Student Leadership

The actions of Vemuri, Kumar, and their peers represent a new model of student leadership that prioritizes moral consistency over institutional approval. By choosing to speak out at moments when they held honored positions—class president and selected commencement speaker—they leveraged their platforms for maximum impact while accepting significant personal risks.

Their speeches will likely be remembered long after the conventional graduation addresses are forgotten, marking them as defining moments in the ongoing campus activism around the Israel-Palestine conflict. They also demonstrate how individual students can transform institutional ceremonies into moments of political accountability, challenging universities to live up to their stated values of justice and human rights.

As the 2025 graduation season continues, the precedent set by these Indian American students may inspire others to use their moments on stage not just to celebrate personal achievements, but to advocate for the causes they believe will define their generation’s legacy.

This story is based on reporting from NBC News, The Jerusalem Post, The Week, Harvard Magazine, and other verified sources.