A Graduation for the Resistance

At CUNY's “People’s Graduation,” students keep the agenda on Gaza.

Photo by Elias Guerra

Article co-written by Kimberly Izar and Elias Guerra.

Note: To protect 1202 Magazine’s sources, we’ve chosen to verify and anonymize the names of all students mentioned in this piece. 

Just blocks away from the City College of New York (CCNY) commencement on May 31, an alternative graduation was already in motion.

CUNY students and faculty called it the “People’s Graduation” in tribute to the growing number of universities around the country redirecting their graduations’ focus towards Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

“We aren’t here for a celebration,” said one student. “We are privileged to be here with these gowns and with these degrees … the people of Gaza have been left with nothing.”

CUNY is often referred to as the “people’s university” because of its majority working-class, student-of-color population. Friday’s community graduation emulated the very spirit of this title. 

Held at St. Nicholas Park in the heart of West Harlem, more than 75 people gathered at the community graduation to grieve, reflect, and take action under shared struggle.

Dozens of community members pitched in to tie makeshift diplomas with pink and black bows, hung painted signs, exchanged hugs, and shared plates of halal food donated by a local Pakistani restaurant.

Photos by Elias Guerra

A trail of signage decorated the park’s fences and handrails, underscoring students’ demands for CUNY to divest its $8.5 million in investments in Israeli companies aiding in the genocide. On the tail of one gown read “divest from death.”

“The reason we are here is because 40,000 Palestinians have been murdered by the fascist Israel Zionist state. Shame!” said one student.

In the first 100 days of Israel’s siege in Gaza, the Israeli military has destroyed every single university, what many experts are calling a ‘scholasticide.’

Nearly 20 students delivered speeches before accepting their community diplomas from CUNY faculty—a sharp contrast to the CUNY Law commencement, where student speakers were banned from this year’s ceremony after previous students spoke out in support of Palestine.

During their speeches, many students linked the liberation of Palestine to other nations subjected to Western imperialism and colonialism, from Yemen and Puerto Rico to the Philippines and Pakistan.

Inside their community diplomas was a quote from Bassel Al Araj, a Palestinian activist and author killed by Israeli forces in March 2017. “You want to be an intellectual? You must resist. Otherwise, you and your education are useless,” as stated in the letter.

One student said they wanted to walk the graduation stage in honor of their friend in Rafah, a father with two children whose family was displaced several times.

Photos by Elias Guerra

“I’m walking this stage in honor of those children in hopes for their future, in hopes that they can walk the stage, that their stages are rebuilt, and we help build them.”

From New York City to Denver, student- and faculty-organized graduations in support of Palestinian liberation have sprung up across the nation.

At the same time as the People’s Graduation, City College students were disrupting their own graduation half a mile away. Students walked out of their ceremony but not before booing City College President Vincent Boudreau, who came under fire for calling the NYPD to dismantle the CUNY Gaza Solidarity Encampment in April. NYPD arrested more than 170 protesters and severely brutalized many others during the April 30 raid.

City College students were not allowed to access the campus on Convent Avenue and West 135th Street after the ceremony. Despite being on campus premises just hours before, campus security told students from the walkout they would not be allowed back on campus to retrieve their belongings or access prayer spaces. Both campus security and NYPD in vans followed student protestors for blocks, closing off various roadways as they headed toward St. Nicholas Park.

The CUNY People’s Graduation closed with a call for mutual aid – for Gaza, Sudan, Congo, and other nations facing mass displacement and destruction of their people and land. The remaining six trays of food from the event were donated to jail support for those arrested at pro-Palestine protests that day.

As students wrapped up the school year, another student reminded their peers their fight was not done in vain.

“Everything that you are risking, you are doing for Gaza. You’re doing it for the Palestinians who are not able to risk what they have voluntarily. It is forced upon them,” they said.

“They have no choice but to endure the conditions they are put under. We have the choice.”

Learn more about the mutual aid efforts shared during the CUNY People’s Graduation on May 31.