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USC-AAUP Chapter Statement Regarding the Cancellation of 2024 Valedictorian Graduation Speech

April 18, 2024

In light of the USC administration's decision to cancel the commencement speech of 2024 valedictorian Asna Tabassum, USC-AAUP reminds our academic community of the importance of academic freedom. We speak as faculty affirming a principal tenet of our mission: in the words of the USC Faculty Handbook, “Academic freedom is the core value of every great university.”

Either Asna Tabassum deserves to be valedictorian, or not. If not, then rescind her honor. If so, why deny her the ability to speak that has been given every other valedictorian for decades?  

The Provost’s statement that “There is no free-speech entitlement to speak at a commencement” is technically true: the freedom of speech granted by First Amendment guarantees only that the government will refrain from making prohibitions on speech. But this framing is a diversion from the issues at hand: What we have here is a matter of academic freedom and campus values. As an organization dedicated for more than a century to preserving academic freedom, it is incumbent on the AAUP to challenge this grievously bad decision.

Additionally: framing of this as a security issue is disingenuous at best. If the issue is protecting the valedictorian, there are all manners of threat mitigation available.  The DPS is California's largest private security force.  It strains credulity that DPS, in coordination with city and state law enforcement if necessary, could not fashion a secure environment where the valedictorian could deliver her remarks.

If the issue is protecting the graduation ceremony from those who would disrupt it, how is removing the valedictorian from the ceremony anything other than caving in to illegitimate threats? We have had controversial speakers in the past. In keeping with our core values, we have — simply and unequivocally — let them speak. But here, we have capitulated to a "heckler's veto" before the fact. Why is the burden of a potential threat placed on the shoulders of the valedictorian rather than those who would disrupt her?

Faculty participated in selecting Tabassum as valedictorian in recognition of not only her high G.P.A. but her remarkable achievements. While it is salutary that the Provost is taking responsibility for the decision to disinvite her from giving the traditional valedictorian speech, the fact that it was made without consulting the bodies nominally involved in academic decisionmaking, the Academic Senate or the Faculty Councils, gives the lie to the notion of 'shared governance.' This was a decision that affects our larger community, done entirely without any notice to or consultation with that community.  

It appears that the only input that mattered to the Provost's office came from people who took issue with a link on an Instagram page.

Asna Tabassum has earned the highest academic honor bestowed on an undergraduate student. She has distinguished herself academically and earned highest accolades throughout her tenure at USC. Surely she has earned the standing to address her peers and the campus community.

By casting aside the achievements and USC’s own recognition of such an acclaimed student, the USC administration does not merely create a chilling effect on the academic freedom of the entire USC community. It actively strangles it. 

USC's capitulation here plays into the hands of those in Washington and elsewhere, many of them anti-intellectual reactionaries, who are opportunistically, cynically using the banner of "antisemitism-on-campus" as a means to assault  higher education in the US and to demonize campus communities that express solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle.  

What this surely looks like is less campus security threats than cowardly administrators afraid of facing heat from forces beyond our campus (see this, today) throwing an undergraduate student and indeed the entire USC community under a bus. Their capitulation harms not only our campus community but all of higher education in the U.S. By being honored as the 2024 valedictorian, Asna has been called to speak by USC; let her.