This morning, May 21, a choir of angry aimed at the acting president of the Columbia University Claire Shipman through the crowd of thousands at the school officially. It was a clear contrast from the scene in St. Paul and St. Andrew United methodist Church in Manhattan three days ago on Sunday evening, where a interpretation of “We Sillies overcome”, when graduated students from Columbia and New York University (NYU) was in blue and purple Regony Ceronian.
Organizers called a graduation of a people this weekend, one in which students who stood up for the rights of Palestinians would be honored. It was the second year in a row that such an event was held: last May hundreds attended a similar counter match in the Cathedral of Saint John The Divine, days after Columbia called the police on campus to arrest pro-Palestine demonstrants.
Noor Abdalla, the wife of the recent graduate Columbia -graduate Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested by immigration forces in March, was at the head of Sunday’s queue. Khalil was planned to walk in Cap and dress today in the official Ceremony of Columbia; Instead, he is more than a thousand miles away in an immigration -detention facility in Louisiana.
In the midst of the thunderous applause and cheers, Abdalla walked over the stage and rocked their newborn son, Deen, who wore a small diploma with a Palestinian flag.
“It was heartbreaking,” said Layla Saliba, a friend of Khalil, about the speech of Abdalla. “There was hardly any dry eyes in sight.”
Khalil may not have walked, but he was everywhere when graduating the people. Photos of him were projected on the wall behind the stage, and his name was splashed over banners hung around the church, printed on giant posters of his diploma, and invoked in songs that would ring so often, in which he was called to be free.
There was even a chair reserved for Khalil in the front row.
Carly Shaffer, a Jewish student in Columbia and one of the organizers of the event, graduates from the same school where Khalil was, the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). “In order to celebrate Mahmoud to the extent that he should be celebrated at his graduation, we had to make our own graduation, apart from the SIPA,” said Shaffer Hyperallergic.
Abdalla spoke from the pulpit, occasionally torn over, overwhelmed by the emotions of celebrating Khalil’s graduation in his absence.
“Mahmoud [Khalil] Has never worn a cap and dress – never had the time to be publicly celebrated because of its academic performance. Before he was held, I was overjoyed that he would finally experience this milestone, “she said.” But as a witness to the birth of our son Deen and the first precious month of his life, this moment was also stolen from him. “
On the left side of the stage, surrounded by bouquets, KeffiyehsAnd a graduation dress in Columbia, was an installation with three diplomas – one for Khalil, another for Abdalla, and a third for their son. The baby’s diploma rested on a chair draped with a green onesie. In white letters in white letters: “When I grow up, I want to be like my father.”
Just like in last year’s opposing, Palestine was the core of the graduation of this people. Speakers referred to the constant destruction in Gaza, while referring to personal anecdotes about their Palestinian parents, friends and loved ones in their speeches. Complicated embroidered traditional Thobes and Keffiyehs to bedazed watermelon bags and graduation tips embellished with Ghassan Kanafani quotes – Palestine was worn.
Friends of Khalil brought commemorative pins decorated with red papavers and printed with names of students in Gaza who were killed before they could graduate. “You never let us forget that every university in Gaza had been destroyed – that you kept in your heart, Palestine,” said Barnard professor Shayoni Mitra in a speech.
“Here, in this church, I felt more like a Columbia student than on campus,” said Saliba, a Palestinian American student who graduates from Columbia this week.
Aidan Parisi, a student in Columbia who was recently deported by the university about their role in the acquisition of Hamilton Hall last year, said the event fulfilled them with mixed emotions.
“I think bittersweet is a great way to describe it,” said Parisi. “It is really able to see that many of my classmates continue this fight for a free Palestine. But it is also a bit difficult to know that it was so many of us for so many of us, and knowing that Mahmoud cannot be with us here, is really daunting.”
Maryam Alwan, a Palestinian-American graduated senior in Columbia who spoke during the event, spoke to students who, like Parisi, had been on the receiving side of punitive action from their university.
“For those of you who were wrongly suspended or expelled by Columbia, your graduation does not have to be marked by a piece of paper or a stage,” said Alwan.
Last week the Gallatin School of NYU held the diploma of a speaker of a student, Logan Rozos, who spoke about the “atrocities currently taking place in Palestine” during his speech.
“What is the value of a diploma of an institution that is so empty at the core that it could do something like that?” Said James Schamus, a professor in the film studies at Columbia and Emcee for the evening, who thinks about NYU’s actions. “And the immediate answer can be: nothing.”
Shaffer described Sunday’s event as “a beautiful evening of unity, celebration, mourning and sorrow.”
“This is our way to say that, regardless of what Trump government and Columbia University continue to do, Palestinians deserve to live, they deserve to be honored, and we as the Columbia community will continue to make sure that it happens,” Shaffer said.
“You graduated in every protest, in every teach-in and in every community building event,” Alwan added. “You graduated in the power that was needed to resist a system that you wanted to silence opposition against genocide.”
