The Israel-Hamas war has raged on for practically the entire academic year. In December, I wrote a column criticizing the USC administration’s response to the conflict. In the piece, I reprimanded the Daily Trojan, which has been woefully inept at covering the war. Protests have continued on campus in support of both sides, and the administration has been untested since it wrongfully suspended Professor John Strauss for his anti-Hamas rhetoric. Until this week, it seemed that the campus would see the year’s end without much more division and prepared for election season in the fall.
Valedictorian selections are not meant to be controversial. Students with a GPA of 3.98 or higher are pooled together to be selected by committee. Instead, someone along the way decided that nominating an openly anti-Zionist valedictorian would be the ideal course of action at a time of peak geopolitical tension. Asna Tabassum’s Instagram bio includes self-published flashcards positing that “Zionism is a racist settler-colonial ideology.” Our bloated administration, whose salaries are baked into our staggeringly high tuition costs, decided to divide again by selecting her. Amongst other choices, they selected a woman whose role at graduation is to speak for her experience at the University – someone who may instead tell the numerous Jewish graduates in attendance that the sole Jewish state in the world ought to cease to exist. This article does not take away from Tabassum’s hefty academic achievements during her time at USC, and I will go on to defend her right to speech in this article. Regardless, the first fault falls with an ambitious administration that likely hoped to make a splash by putting up a valedictorian whom they surely knew harbored anti-Zionist views. In their hopes to propel the University of Southern California to the upper echelons of academia, our admin only makes us regret paying for top ten tuition costs without seeing worthwhile results.
Still, now that the decision has been made, Tabassum ought to be able to speak and still be honored as valedictorian. There are three primary reasons why this is the case: pragmatic optics, free-speech principles, and the absurdity of her attempting to turn a graduation speech into a political statement. Firstly, if USC were to remove Tabassum from the podium, they would be revoking a young hijab-wearing Muslim woman’s arguably prime achievement in her life. That not only upsets me as her peer and offends my presupposition of religious liberty, but also could train the wrath of the national media. And if I’m being frank, they would have a point – compared to other selected valedictorians, Southern California would be engaging in viewpoint discrimination. While USC has not adopted the “Chicago free speech principles,” it should. The crux of the statement declares:
Although the University greatly values civility, and although all members of the University community share in the responsibility for maintaining a climate of mutual respect, concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community.
Suppose USC is to join a nationwide effort to maintain free speech on campus. In that case, it cannot outright revoke Tabassum’s selection as valedictorian, nor can it determine that she does not speak at graduation. Both decisions would fly in the face of the liberal tradition in the Anglosphere’s universities.
Despite having made a permanent decision in selecting Tabassum, there remains one avenue of reparation that the administration can take after their mishandling. Since the valedictorian presumptively speaks on behalf of the University during her speech, the nature of its content can be regulated by the University. Such a regulation would mean she may not display any explicitly anti-Zionist rhetoric when speaking. In other words, Tabassum may have a Palestinian banner on her sash, but not a Hamas flag. The limitation of her speech is justifiable in this instance because of the role of the speech at the graduation ceremony. The administration is not justified in being scared to offend Jewish or Zionist graduating Trojans but is right to keep Tabassum from espousing a semantically anti-semitic view at a University-run event. If USC applies this pressure and she refuses, she will have effectively revoked her status as valedictorian.
It would be ridiculous for Tabassum to speak about geopolitics in her speech in any manner. Her minor in genocide prevention would hopefully have taught her about the deadliest genocide in history: the Holocaust. She ought to understand the stark differences between the SS and IDF and that there is no Jewish or Zionist Trojan that intends to destroy the existence of the Palestinian or Arab race. Long gone are the days when progressives and leftists protested just causes, such as the Vietnam War or civil rights for black and gay Americans. After the fall of the Soviet Union and American strength in response to 9/11, campus activists today haphazardly decided to shove their support behind a regressive terror group. By following this morally vacuous trend on a graduation day of great joy for many students, Tabassum would be engaging in behavior worthy of ridicule.
In writing this article, I have implicitly disagreed with Trojans for Israel’s statement on Tabassum’s role as valedictorian. While TFI remains a campus organization I respect, they could have exercised more caution in their statement rather than asking for Tabassum to be deposed. Both in terms of strategy and optics, a tone of disappointment similar to this article would be effective without going so far. While knowing that Jewish and Muslim Trojans face significant trauma at this time, these are better moments than any for education and level-headedness. Hopefully, Asna Tabassum can change her tone to be a voice for peace rather than ostensibly supporting faux Palestinian “liberation” and pogrom apologism alike. Instead, she ought to praise the many privileges and fruits of graduating from USC while she speaks in front of an incompetent administration.
