2025 MIT class president banned from graduation ceremony after pro-Palestinian speech | 1 June 2025 | The 2025 class president of MIT was barred from attending her graduation ceremony on Friday after delivering a speech denouncing the war in Gaza at a commencement event the day before. Megha Vemuri told CNN that after her speech, the university’s senior leadership informed her she was not allowed to attend Friday’s commencement ceremony and was barred from campus until the event concluded. Vemuri will still receive her degree, an MIT spokesperson told CNN. The class president was a scheduled speaker at Thursday’s OneMIT Commencement ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she took to the podium, a keffiyeh — a symbol of pro-Palestinian solidarity — draped over her graduation robe.