In some ways, a walkout by pro-Palestinian students at the City University of New York School of Law’s commencement on Thursday was part of the unique political moment that has marked the Class of 2024’s graduation season at so many universities.
But CUNY law students were also carrying on something of a graduation tradition at their school.
Students chanted pro-Palestinian messages, waved painted banners as they walked across the stage and turned their backs to the law school’s dean, Sudha Setty, during her remarks onstage at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Then, after the last degrees had been conferred, dozens of students rose from their seats and walked out, joined by a handful of professors and guests.
“It reminded me so much of why I came to CUNY Law,” Ale Humano, one of the graduates who walked out of the ceremony, said.
The walkout on Thursday is not the first time that tensions over Israel have taken center stage during a commencement ceremony for the New York City public law school. The school, which is known for fostering public interest lawyers, has been a hot spot for pro-Palestinian activism for years, and its graduation ceremonies have recently become the site of conflict over politics related to Israel.
For the past two years, law school commencement speakers have made support for Palestinians and opposition to Israel a focus of their speeches, eliciting criticism from public officials, who called the speeches antisemitic.
In 2023, Fatima Mousa Mohammed, a Yemeni immigrant and an activist devoted to the Palestinian cause, denounced “Israeli settler colonialism” in her address. The speech set off furious coverage and a wave of public criticism, including from Mayor Eric Adams, who spoke at the same ceremony and condemned the speech’s “divisiveness.”
In response, the law school announced in September, before the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, that it would not allow the students to nominate a peer to speak at graduation, breaking with tradition.
That decision has caused its own controversy. In April, eight CUNY law students filed a federal lawsuit claiming the school is infringing on their First Amendment rights by not allowing a student-elected speaker to give an address.
Two guests who had been scheduled to speak at the commencement — Deborah N. Archer, a civil rights lawyer and president of the American Civil Liberties Union, and Muhammad U. Faridi, a litigator — also withdrew, leaving the ceremony with no outside speakers and no keynote address.
The walkout on Thursday comes as universities across the country have heightened security measures around their commencements in the wake of protests on their campuses against the war in Gaza. In the last two weeks, hundreds of students have either disrupted or walked out of their commencement ceremonies. Earlier on Thursday, hundreds of students walked out of Harvard University’s commencement as degrees were conferred.
At the CUNY law school, at least 50 students held banners with pro-Palestinian messages — including “Free them all from Rikers to Rafah” — as they received their degrees. At two points in the ceremony, students stood and chanted collectively in what they called a “mic check,” an effort to reclaim the student address after the removal of the speaking slot.
In a video from inside the venue shared with The New York Times by one of the graduates, students can be seen standing and walking out of the venue, as guests cheer them on from the balcony. By the video’s end, most of the auditorium seats occupied by students were empty.
On the way to a nearby plaza, students chanted “disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest” and then posed for photos, wearing kaffiyehs or stoles that said “Palestine” over their robes.
A professor at the law school, Babe Howell, read the lawyer’s pledge — a vow to be ethical lawyers that is read as the culmination of graduation every year — from atop a platform.
A spokeswoman for the law school did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the activism at the graduation.
But several students said the day’s activism had made the ceremony especially meaningful to them.
“I’m glad we were able to make Palestine front and center as it should be,” Nusayba Hammad, a Palestinian American student and one of the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit, said. “Every single thing we do is for that.”
