On Monday afternoon, University of Southern California Provost Andrew T. Guzman made an announcement: “After careful consideration, we have decided that our student valedictorian will not deliver a speech at commencement. While this is disappointing, tradition must give way to safety.”
While the student valedictorian wasn’t named, Guzman was referring to Asna Tabassum, a first-generation South Asian American Muslim, who was scheduled to address some 65,000 people at USC’s commencement next month. While the move was made in the name of safety, the truth is that it could lead to greater danger: the chilling of free speech and further alienation of young people from the political process. If others see what happened to Tabassum — along with the mass arrests by police in riot gear of pro-Palestinian student protesters at Columbia University on Thursday — as a cautionary tale, we risk silencing some of the greatest voices of the next generation.
If others see what happened to Tabassum as a cautionary tale, we risk silencing some of the greatest voices of the next generation.
“Because I am not aware of any specific threats against me or the university, because my request for the details underlying the university’s threat assessment has been denied, and because I am not being provided any increased safety to be able to speak at commencement, there remain serious doubts about whether USC’s decision to revoke my invitation to speak is made solely on the basis of safety,” Tabassum wrote in a statement published Monday by the Greater Los Angeles Area Office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Six months into Israel’s war in Gaza, global anger only grows more acute. Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territories, has testified at the United Nations that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide…has been met.” Israel has rejected the report. The Israel Defense Forces’ killing of seven World Central Kitchen volunteers earlier this month put the indiscriminate destruction in Gaza into even sharper relief. And yet here in America, expressing support for the oppressed will still lose you privileges — as was the case for former New York Times writer Jazmine Hughes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen and Oscar-winning actor Susan Sarandon.
Last week, the Instagram account @IsraelWarRoom claimed that Tabassum “promotes antisemitic views,” sharing a screenshot of her personal Instagram page, which included a link to a pro-Palestinian website, along with screenshots from the site, which was not created by Tabassum.
The people behind the pro-Israel account took umbrage with the pro-Palestine site’s characterization of Zionism as a “racist settler-colonial ideology” and the belief that Palestinian liberation cannot be achieved “without the complete abolishment of the state of Israel.” Some may see this as violent; I see it as an acknowledgment that you are denying reality if you believe Palestinians have any chance to prosper under Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
The @IsraelWarRoom account has fomented hate against multiple progressive members of Congress and has called for Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member, to resign. The group doesn’t claim to be an objective source — but neither did Tabassum.
As a Jewish American woman, I do not feel threatened by Tabassum’s social media activity and her silencing doesn’t make me feel any safer. While the exact characterizations of the situations for Israelis and Palestinians that she linked to are not the ones I would personally use, as the death toll in Gaza rounds 34,000 people, it’s difficult to understand how those words could still be considered so wrong. Being Jewish right now is scary, but so is being Palestinian.
According to a statement from CAIR, “Tabassum was told that the school could not maintain an appropriate level of security if she spoke due to the volume of security threats and harassment from pro-Israel critics. She was told this decision ‘was not a judgment on you and your accomplishments and ambitions.; The official claimed the volume of vitriol was ‘unprecedented.’”
Is silencing Muslim students the only way to protect them from vitriolic pro-Israel voices?
Despite USC’s explanation, Tabassum still saw it as a rejection of her views, writing in her statement that “the University is succumbing to a campaign of hate meant to silence my voice.” When reached for comment, the provost’s office pointed me to Guzman’s published statement.
This whole USC affair highlights what universities claim they are trying to do. But is silencing Muslim students the only way to protect them from vitriolic pro-Israel voices? Is this actually an attempt to keep Muslim students safe, or an attempt to create a hermetically-sealed safe space for pro-Israel students?
Regardless of intent, these efforts make Muslim students targets for discrimination and hate. At UNC-Chapel Hill, a member of the board of trustees expressed concern that speeches in Arabic were a safety threat and called for that school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine to be investigated. The group has filed a civil rights complaint. When someone replied to my post on social media about Tabassum saying that she’s a “bigot” who “knowingly spreads hate,” these characterizations revealed to me just how subjective all of our experiences are right now. I’m struck by the abject fear stoked by one college student’s opinion. What does USC think will happen if it allows this academically gifted student who, like countless other young Americans, has earned the right through her academic achievements to speak at her own college commencement? Is it really fear of promoting antisemitic hatred or is it fear of legitimizing a different point of view? While our views — based on the very little I know of Tabassum’s from her social media — may not totally align, I still respect her right to share hers. While the university provost may say that “there is no free-speech entitlement to speak at a commencement,” it is something she rightfully earned. And now it’s been taken away. In the “State of World Jewry” speech at the 92Y in late February, right-wing activist journalist Bari Weiss spoke of freedom being “under siege” in America “by an elite culture that has so lost all sense of right and wrong, good and bad, or has so cunningly transformed those categories, that it can call a massacre ‘resistance.’ A genocidal chant, a call for ‘freedom.’ And a just war of self-defense ‘genocide.’” While Weiss’ speech was not without protests, she was ultimately given the opportunity and safety to be able to give it anyway. It’s a curious decision when the very same institution canceled a reading in late October by Viet Thanh Nguyen after he signed a letter condemning violence against Palestinians. Why is it controversial to call for the end of violence and not controversial to call a genocide a war of self-defense? Back in November, I wrote of Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, who has continually conflated antizionism with antisemitism: “He’s decided that instead of holding people in power accountable — say, a billionaire who owns an influential social network and posts/shares harmful white supremacist and antisemitic ideas — he’s going to focus on young adults who are figuring out who they are in the midst of violence and chaos.” And USC is perpetuating that same disturbing pattern. A toxic sludge of religion and nationalism has turned so many of us inward, completely unable to tolerate viewpoints even a few degrees separated from ours. But seeking to silence them — especially young people’s — will only breed more resentment and alienation. If we don’t allow others to speak, how can we possibly expect them to listen when it’s our turn?
Marisa Kabas
Marisa Kabas writes about politics, media and gender and their many intersections. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, HuffPost and The New Republic, and she writes a newsletter called The Handbasket. She is based in Brooklyn, New York. 
