Pro-Palestinian protesters at a Massachusetts college faced chants of “U.S.A!” during a weekend graduation. The event came amid a series of other disruptions on college campuses, including during recent graduations.
Pro-Palestinian protesters started to put up a sign to interrupt the graduation at Boston University this weekend. In response, when the students carried the banner, members of the crowd chanted “U.S.A!”
Boston University students started shouting “USA, USA” at Palestinian protesters who disrupted their graduation ceremony.
Congratulations to good Americans graduating from BU! Proud of you! 🇺🇸pic.twitter.com/EwDH6iFhub
— Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) May 19, 2024
About 50 students are estimated to have left the graduation ceremony.
They chanted “Disclose. Divest. We will not stop, we will not rest.”
Despite the disruption, the remainder of the commencement ceremony was completed as expected. There were no arrests.
The students who left the graduation ceremony walked to support striking graduate students. The student protesters demanded that the college divest its funds from Israeli companies and interests, calling Israel’s current war against Hamas “genocide.”
The Boston event was not the only recent disruption. Over the weekend several students turned their backs on President Joe Biden while he was giving the commencement address to Morehouse College. The valedictorian of the college’s graduating class also called for a ceasefire in the current Middle East conflict.
Furthermore, other students walked out of comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s address at Duke University. The speech itself was not political in nature, but there were two potential reasons commonly cited over why the students may have walked out.
One may have been due to antisemitism because of the fact that Seinfeld is Jewish. The second could be related to his recent comments stating that ‘wokeness’ was hurting comedy.
In addition, there was a disruption at a Michigan college by pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Similar to the Boston graduation, some of the members of the crowd instead chanted “U.S.A!” over the protesters.
There was another disruption during the graduation at the University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley is a frequent hotbed of student dissent.
In addition, the graduation disruptions came after weeks of student protests on other campuses, which started at Columbia University.
