The commencements that take place at our institutions each spring are sacred. For the class of 2024, this commencement is even more meaningful. The Class of 2024 lost out on our high school graduations and our freshman year of college. President Joseph R. Biden’s upcoming commencement address at Morehouse College is an egregious political mistake and an incredible slap in the face to the graduating class of 2024 and The AUC community.
In recent months, President Biden and his team have circled The Atlanta University Center like a flock of vultures1, frequenting our institutions for the social currency that comes with posturing themselves next to Black exceptionalism. Biden knows he’s at risk of losing our vote. It was not until 2019, while campaigning, that President Biden apologized out of heightening political pressure for his past associations with segregationists, his public stance against busing, and his role in the revictimization of Anita Hill during her 1991 landmark hearing. In light of Biden’s apologies, he said his “missteps” should not define his “record of fighting racial injustice.” But how is it 2024, and President Biden is still misstepping this badly? Years from now, will he finally consider his role in the genocide of Palestinians yet another one of his missteps?
Morehouse College President David A. Thomas’ decision to invite President Biden as the commencement speaker illustrates a more extensive pattern where prioritizing profit, economically or socially, takes precedence over listening to students, faculty, and staff within Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).”2 The Atlanta University Center (AUC), composed of Spelman College, Morehouse College, Clark Atlanta University, and Morris Brown College, has a rich activist history.3 Despite this legacy, the students and faculty engaged in this radical work remain the minority. In the AUC, students and faculty like Alice Walker, Howard Zinn, Samuel L. Jackson, and W.E.B. Du Bois—now globally celebrated for their contributions—faced punishment, ostracism, suspension, or even expulsion for their activism. At Spelman College’s Founders Day convocation, scholar-activist Dr. Ruha Benjamin, 2024 recipient of the college’s honorary degree, openly criticized our school’s conflicting values.
President Thomas of Morehouse College, President Helene Gayle of Spelman College, President George T. French Jr. of Clark Atlanta University, and members of the Board of Trustees persist in ignoring and silencing student activists while embracing financial partnerships that deepen our disenfranchisement.4 Time and again, they prioritize decisions that enhance their reputations and institutional prestige, often at the detriment of their students and the surrounding West End community. Our Presidents sit on the Atlanta Committee for Progress, a group of CEOs working alongside Mayor Dickens and The Atlanta Police Department (APD) to gentrify the city and is seeding the initial funding for The Atlanta Training Facility (Cop City). This group operates under the pretense that they are addressing police brutality. When in reality, Cop City mirrors its original facility called “Little Gaza,” used by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) to commit the ongoing genocide in Gaza. This connection suggests that the facility would only exacerbate state-sanctioned violence against Black and Brown people here in Atlanta.
Our commencement ceremonies strive to acknowledge our students’ hard work and perseverance. They signify our debut into the world as accomplished scholars, shaping not only the trajectories of our own lives but also influencing the path of the student body throughout their remaining time in school. For President Thomas to hijack, this momentous occasion is atrocious. To add insult to injury, on May 12th, David A. Thomas went on an NPR interview threatening to weaponize the precarious position of the graduating class by threatening to cancel commencement if anyone protests this injustice. During his interview, he stated, “I would conclude the ceremony [on the spot]” when questioned about the possibility of students being arrested during the ceremony. Additionally, he boasted about having The Atlanta Police Department, The Sheriff’s Office, and The United States Secret Service at his disposal to use against those he perceived as a threat which goes into a larger issue of school officials endangering and criminalizing Black students.5
While Thomas may not recognize or care about the position that we, as Black and Brown students, are put in by the ongoing genocide of Palestinians and the encroaching threat of Cop City, we do. He may be willing to tarnish the legacy of Morehouse and the AUC as institutions within the black radical tradition. But we are not. While others form hypothetical questions about the risk of holding President Biden accountable and the possibility of former President Trump returning to the White House in the next election, the redundancy is growing. It’s not the responsibility of Black and Palestinian communities to bear the harm caused by politicians’ decisions.
We refuse to sit back and attempt to reap the benefits of threats against the lives of our brothers, sisters, and siblings, both Black and Brown, both at home and abroad. As students within the AUC, we refuse to allow the narrative that students at HBCUs are complicit. As our comrades at Xavier University of Louisiana have shown us, divestment is possible! Despite the actions of our presidents, trustee members, and administration– who prioritize political posturing over the well-being of our community– we, along with students, faculty, staff, local activists, and community members, recognize the interconnected struggles faced by the Black and Palestinian communities. You can support our demands for divestment by signing our petition, which currently has 800+ signatures, and receive more information from our decade-long student organizing group, AUC Students for Justice in Palestine, on Instagram @aucsjp!
Students Marq Riggins, a graduating senior with a B.A. in Sociology from Morehouse College, and Sydney Jael Wilson, a rising senior pursuing a degree in Comparative Women’s Studies at Spelman College, wrote this editorial. Edited by Lisette Allison, a rising junior pursuing a degree in Biology at Clark Atlanta University.
Notes
1. Southern, Teresa. “Vice President Kamala Harris Visits the AUC on ‘Fight for Our Freedoms’ College Tour .” Atlanta University Center Consortium, 3 Oct. 2023; Douglas, Andrew (@ajd_theory). “She was so unprepared for this. Crazy at this point that any Biden official, really any major party official or appointee of any sort, still imagines they can step on an HBCU campus and be met with anything but disruption. Proud of these students.” Twitter, 8 Apr. 2024, https://shorturl.at/oFHR7 ; Email sent to Clark Atlanta University students in preparation for Vice President Kamala Harris’s visit following the announcement of President Biden as Morehouse College’s 2024 Commencement Speaker. Clark Atlanta University. “Atlanta Student Movement Boulevard Restricted Access.” Email received by Clark Atlanta student body, April 29, 2024.
2. Esayeas, Benaias. “The Untold Violence of HBCUs- Violence Against Black Students and Faculty.” Medium, Medium, 6 May 2022, https://shorturl.at/uyCVW ; Davis-Howard, Khiara, et al. “Howard Settles Complaint with Former Student Alleging Mental Health Discrimination – the Hilltop.” The Hilltop – The Nation’s Oldest Black Collegiate Newspaper, 27 Mar. 2024, https://shorturl.at/mUXY8 ; Stirgus, Eric. “Some HBCU Faculty in Atlanta Refusing to Teach in Person Due to Covid-19 Safety Concerns.” The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 19 Aug. 2021, https://shorturl.at/fkJLY; etc
3. Our activism spans across the years from The Atlanta Student Movement (February 1960), The Lock-In of The Morehouse Board of Trustees (1969), The Lock-In of The Spelman Board of Trustees (1976), The South African Apartheid Divestment Campaign (1986), The Nelly Protest (2004),Students for Justice in Palestine (2014-), Sexual Assault Protest in the AUC (throughout the 2000s, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2020, 2023, etc), Crown Forum Stop Cop City Disruption (2023) to our recent protest in Solidarity with Palestine (2024) and other that remain undocumented.
4. Atlanta Committee for Progress, atlprogress.org/about.php. Accessed 15 May 2024. ; Morehouse College. “Morehouse College President David A. Thomas, Ph.D.. Joins Vanguard Board of Directors.” Morehouse College, The Maroon Tiger , 23 July 2021, https://shorturl.at/kJTWX ; Williams , Bennie. “‘We Need You Here’ Morehouse and Spelman Students Protest during Crown Forum to Challenge Morehouse to Join ‘stop Cop City’ Efforts.” The Maroon Tiger, 3 Feb. 2023, https://shorturl.at/abpS5
5. Dr. Monique Couvson’s Pushout focuses on the criminalization of Black girls in schools. Her theory is to be used in conjunction with the school to prison pipeline and over policing of Black and Brown people in education.
During his interview, [Thomas] stated, “I would conclude the ceremony [on the spot]” when questioned about the possibility of students being arrested during the ceremony.
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Monumentally stupid statement/move on the part of President Thomas of Morehouse University.
Why? Because by publicly announcing his determination to pull the plug on the ceremony if any students protest…he has placed the power to abort Genocide Joe’s presentation squarely in the hands of the students!
In theory, anyone, student, faculty or someone wandering in off the street could just shout “Genocide Joe Has Got to Go” a few times and watch as the ceremony is unceremoniously terminated by the university president. Duh!
Its like that movie where the guy threatens to kill himself if the thugs who came to kill him take a step closer.
It seems to me that the politicians now in power and the university presidents now in office have learned nothing from history. They seem to think that by suppressing speech or tearing down posters and conducting mass arrests that they have somehow crushed dissent. Those techniques can and do work in fascist, totalitarian societies, like Israel, but they cannot work here.
My guess is that there are now, as we speak, tens of thousands of motivated, savvy and freshly-politicized university students planning to use their summer vacations to orchestrate new Palestine solidarity actions for the Fall.
Just as Likud/Netanyahu thought the Palestinians in Gaza had finally been crushed by the IDF policy of “mowing the lawn” so too may US Establishment political parties, universities, government agencies and a host of other institutional proxies of political Zionism come to realize that all they have done with their arrests, suspensions, police actions, etc. is enrage the students and drive them underground.
The universities did not derail or defeat the political energy underpinning the Encampment Uprisings that shook American universities from coast-to-coast. All they did was buy a little quiet time for their sacrosanct commencement ceremonies and placate, somewhat, some self-important and privileged donors.
The Democratic National Convention may turn out to be a replay of 1968’s little mis-adventure in urban police brutality. And let’s not forget the opportunities for dissent that the presidential elections themselves will present.
David Ben Gurion lectured American Zionists ad nauseam that they must “Never allow Israel to become a partisan issue in the US.” Wise counsel but ignored by Netanyahu & Co.
Fall may prove to be a very interesting time, historically.
View here 44 Palestine posters related to Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.
MOREHOUSE STUDENTS: The Biden-Bibi Genocide Regime is AFRAID OF YOU!
“These administrators demand, like all who manage corporate systems of power, total obedience. Dissent. Freedom of expression. Critical thought. Moral outrage. These have no place in our corporate-indentured universities.” Chris Hedges
The students were in a great American tradition, rising to oppose a genocidal war. The student body and faculty are largely on their side, and history will honor them. Rashid Khalidi, Columbia U.
GOOD TROUBLE COMING TO THE WEST END! WHERE’S ANITA???
FROM THE WEST END TO THE WEST BANK, STOP COP CITY & FREE PALESTINE!
THE ONLY THING RADICALIZING STUDENT PROTESTERS : SAVAGE PHOTOS OF ISRAELS GENOCIDE IN THE GAZA STRIP
I hope the students make “Genocide Joe” uncomfortable. He’s a politician who has always been quick to take credit for positions that he only embraced after the polls gave him eleventh hour courage. He has taken the wrong stand on countless important issues in his five plus decades in Washington (GWBush Iraq War and the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas Senate hearings are but two of many such examples).
Be honest, it has taken the historically oppressed black community to recognize and stand up for the century long oppression of Palestinians by Zionist and after creation of Israel in 48 Israeli’s. That complicity or silence has been rampant in the Jewish community as well, up until the last 25 years
The times are a changing. .