Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Sunday, April 21. I’m your host, Andrew J. Campa. Here’s what you need to know to start your weekend:
Speakers continue to be cut from USC’s graduation
In less than a week, USC has altered a commencement tradition dating back more than a century.
On Friday, the university called off the appearance of “Crazy Rich Asians” director Jon M. Chu and other commencement honorees as the controversy grows over its decision to cancel a speech by Valedictorian Asna Tabassum over unspecified security concerns.
USC informed would-be graduation-goers that it made the decision “to release our outside speakers and honorees from attending this year’s ceremony” due to “the highly publicized circumstances surrounding our main-stage commencement program.”
USC had initially invited Chu, tennis legend Billie Jean King, National Endowment for the Arts Chair Maria Rosario Jackson and National Academy of Sciences President Marcia McNutt in March to receive honorary degrees.
King, a Cal State University Los Angeles product, is still keynote speaker at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism’s satellite ceremony.
Media storm over decision
USC did not cite security as the reason for the latest cancellations, as it had on Monday. That day, the university kick-started a media storm, with reporting from The Times as well as the BBC, Reuters, Fox News, the New York Times and others after it canceled its valedictorian from speaking during graduation, citing unnamed threats.
University officials acknowledged that the silencing of Tabassum marked the first time a valedictorian would not speak in a traditional sense onstage.
In a campuswide letter distributed Monday, USC Provost Andrew T. Guzman cited unnamed threats that he said had poured in since the university publicized Tabassum’s name and biography.
Guzman said attacks against the student for her pro-Palestinian views had reached an “alarming tenor” and “escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement.”
The opposition to Tabassum appeared to stem mostly from a link on her Instagram profile to a website she did not create.
The site, Free Palestine Carrd, features a series of links on how to “learn about what’s happening in Palestine.” The links include statements that Zionism is a “racist settler-colonialist ideology” and that founders of Zionism thought “Palestinians needed to be ethnically cleansed from their homes.”
Guzman said that in the end, “tradition must give way to safety.”
The decision’s fallout
This wasn’t the first time speech regarding the war in the Gaza Strip has resulted in an on-campus controversy.
In November, USC professor John Strauss was placed on paid administrative leave and barred from campus after viral videos in which he apparently says: “Hamas are murderers. That’s all they are. Every one should be killed, and I hope they all are killed.”
Strauss later returned to teaching undergraduate students that semester, albeit virtually.
As for Tabassum, she said the decision to cancel her speech left her feeling “betrayed.” And dozens of student groups and an on-campus protest on Thursday have condemned the school’s decision.
This newspaper’s editorial board also disagreed with USC’s decision, writing that the message “this sends to graduating seniors is that when a threat to free speech arrives, it’s time to cave.” Readers were split over the decision, while outside experts offered potential fixes.
USC’s 141st annual commencement ceremony is set for May 10, with any updates sure to be reported here.
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Column One
Column One is The Times’ home for narrative and long–form journalism. Here’s a great piece from this week:
Arrested in Mexico, Jose Luis Saenz sat on the Alaska Airlines flight in handcuffs, escorted by FBI agents to a city that had changed profoundly in his absence. By the time he stood trial in 2022, the jury was transported to places that no longer existed. Housing projects just east of the L.A. River where Saenz once lived — and allegedly killed — had been torn down. Townhouses, warehouses and a light-rail station took their place. The gangs that detectives said ruled over the projects, frightening families into returning home before sundown, had dwindled in size and influence, but the legend of Smiley, Saenz’s nickname, endured.
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Andrew J. Campa, reporter
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