Morehouse College, get on the right side of history, rescind your invitation to President Biden

Editor’s Note: The following statement was issued by Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine – Georgia on Morehouse College’s decision to invite U.S. President Joe Biden as its 2024 Commencement Speaker.

Morehouse College has announced that President Joe Biden will be the school’s commencement speaker this year. This announcement comes seven months into Israel’s genocidal siege on Gaza. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children. More than 77,000 have been injured. Every hospital and university in Gaza has been destroyed. None of this would have been possible without the support and sponsorship of the Biden Administration. Any college or university that gives its commencement stage to President Biden in this moment is endorsing genocide.

As faculty members at academic institutions in and around Atlanta—including Morehouse, Spelman, and Clark Atlanta—we did not see this coming. This is not the Morehouse College that history has known and that we have come to treasure. Over the years, Morehouse commencement speakers have amplified the school’s powerful moral legacy, often doing so by quoting the school’s former president, Dr. Benjamin E. Mays: “it will not be sufficient for Morehouse College, for any college, for that matter, to produce clever graduates,” but rather honest graduates “who are sensitive to the wrongs, the sufferings, and the injustices of society and who are willing to accept responsibility for correcting the ills.” President Biden has not demonstrated sensitivity to wrongs, sufferings, and injustices. And as the one person on the planet who has the power to stop an active genocide, he has not accepted responsibility for correcting the ills.

We understand that the decision to platform Biden was made solely by the Morehouse administration and that students and faculty members were not consulted. College and university administrators have an obligation to include students and faculty members in decisions that will affect them. This decision will do lasting harm to everyone associated with the College. It will do serious reputational damage to Morehouse and other schools in the Atlanta University Center consortium. It will alienate donors. It will discourage new applications from a youth generation that overwhelmingly supports a ceasefire. It will prompt significant protest among current students and faculty, subjecting them to discipline and, potentially, dangerous confrontations with the police.

It is not too late to correct the course. There is no reason why Morehouse cannot rescind this invitation. Indeed, the College must do so.

In the summer of 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr, Morehouse’s most revered alumnus, once again put himself on the right side of history by cancelling a scheduled trip to Israel following the Six Day War in which Israel killed thousands and seized control of Gaza and the West Bank. Following that brutal siege, King rightly but unsuccessfully urged Israel to “give up the conquered territory.” Whatever motivations prompted the Morehouse administration to invite President Biden—an invitation, we understand, that was extended back in early September—Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, underwritten by the Biden Administration, has brought forth a new reality that needs to be reckoned with. As King changed course in 1967, Morehouse must do the same in 2024.

The time is now for Morehouse College to get on the right side of history, rescind the invitation to President Biden, and use its moral authority to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.