MIT bans Indian-American student from attending graduation event after pro-Palestine speech

Megha Vemuri, an Indian-American class president at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who gave a politically charged pro-Palestine speech at a graduation ceremony was banned by the institute.

Vemuri was reportedly banned from attending the undergraduate commencement ceremony on Friday, May 30, 2025. 

MIT Chancellor Melissa Nobles reportedly informed Vemuri via email that she and her family were barred from campus for most of Friday, citing that Vemuri ‘deliberately and repeatedly misled Commencement organisers’ and violated MIT’s rules by leading a ‘protest from the stage’, disrupting the ceremony. 

Vemuri disputed the characterisation of her speech as a protest and called the ban an ‘overreach’.

During the graduation ceremony on Thursday, Vemuri said “MIT wants free Palestine,” from the stage and the crowd waved Palestinian flags in solidarity.

Her speech comes amid the ongoing unrest in the US over the war in Gaza and university connections to defence and research institutions.

She went on to say that It is no secret that at this time, academic institutions across the country are ‘shrouded in a dark cloud of uncertainty’. She also remarked that ‘there is a lot of fear in many of our hearts’.

Vemuri noted that last spring MIT’s undergraduate body and graduate student union voted ‘overwhelmingly’ to cut ties with the “genocidal Israeli military”.

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Indian-American MIT student delivers pro-Palestine speech at graduation