On the third day of campus unrest at USC, Provost Andrew Guzman appeared at the monthly Academic Senate meeting to address the representative faculty body. He defended President Carol Folt’s decision to rescind the valedictorian’s speech at commencement and stated it has nothing to do with Asna Tabasumm’s political views, which have ignited campus and national controversy in the past week.
Guzman, who announced Monday that the 2024 valedictorian would not be speaking at commencement, specifically addressed the faculty senate Wednesday. Guzman noted that the reaction to Tabassum’s selection was “unprecedented in volume and tenor” and noted that USC’s commencement, in which “people are displaying their identities in visible ways,” proves a security challenge every year.
He expressed that while it was not the committee’s “first choice,” he has “a high degree of comfort with the decision” to rescind the valedictorian’s traditional speech. The Marshall Executive Board Member, Christine El Haddad, nodded enthusiastically as Guzman spoke.
The Academic Senate, the “representative body of the entire faculty at USC,” meets monthly in the Faculty Hall of Doheny Library, where the ceiling beams read a Latin phrase, “Palmam qui meruit ferat,” and its translation, “whoever earns the palm shall bear it.”
But for the valedictorian, she must bear it alone.
Two key decisions were made by USC this month. On April 5, the selection of Tabassum as valedictorian was made by Guzman following her recommendation by a faculty committee. However, the decision to rescind Tabassum’s speech was made by Folt this week.
The LA Times and other outlets have reported that Folt made the second decision. In his address to the Academic Senate, Guzman did not directly name Folt but said “a different set of people” decided “we cannot have her speak at commencement.”
Erroll Southers, USC’s associate senior vice president of safety and risk assurance, said the commencement decision was made because of the “specificity of the individual [the valedictorian] and the specificity of the location [of commencement]” which made the risk level for the predicted 70,000-person event “uncomfortable.” Southers noted that the members of his team who have been at USC for 40 years have “never seen anything like this directed at a valedictorian or any speaker.”
Despite what Southers called unprecedented circumstances, some are demanding clearer answers. The undergraduate student government called Folt’s reasoning “insufficient.” Paul Adler, a Marshall professor who attended the Senate meeting, called the provost’s message to the community “disturbingly ambiguous.”
What perhaps is on many students’ minds is the status of the safety of commencement following this decision. It is unclear if barring Tabassum’s speech has produced more threats than her selection.
“There has been another, and this was not unanticipated by us, wave of comments or social media posts. Many of them are antisemitic or Islamophobic, and it’s incredibly disturbing and heartbreaking,” said Beong-Soo Kim, USC’s senior vice president and general counsel.
After Guzman and Southers addressed the Senate, the floor opened for questions. Notably, Johnathan Cohen, a professor of clinical population and public health sciences who shared that he is close to Tabassum, asked the provost during the meeting if he, on behalf of USC, would “adequately condemn those threats, so as to reassure everyone, that we are not the type of university that caters to that kind of pressure.”
Cohen also asked Guzman to confirm that barring Tabassum from speaking “has absolutely nothing to do with Asna’s political views and that [the provost] welcome[s] honest discourse about Israel and Palestine.”
“I’m very happy to say that this decision had nothing to do with her political views and positions,” said Guzman.
Since the announcement of Tabassum as valedictorian, uproar over her pro-Palestinian views expressed on her social media account has spread throughout the USC campus and nationally. Trojans for Israel wrote in a statement on social media that they are “deeply disappointed that USC has failed to condemn the antisemitic rhetoric propagated by the valedictorian.”
The meeting follows international media attention and several highly produced, high-profile sit-down interviews with the valedictorian. In her Monday statement, Tabassum expressed “disappointment” at the university’s decision.
USC Associates Chair in Humanities, English professor and non-voting member of the Senate John Rowe asked why there was no consultation with faculty or the broader student community as to the decision for Tabassum not to speak. The provost answered that it was “not appropriate” and USC leadership teams are “not at liberty” to discuss threats with anyone broader than the direct leadership.
This meeting comes on the same day that more than a hundred faculty members, including Rowe, signed a letter to Folt urging her to reinstate Tabassum’s speech.
Nicolas Duquette, an associate professor at Price, asked why the school chose to remove the valedictorian, noting an alleged pattern of placing the “burden of that safety decision on the person who was the recipient of the threat and not the person who was engaging in the threatening or otherwise malicious behavior.” The question came after a preamble toward Guzman in which Duquette called himself a “big fan.”
The provost answered that this decision was “not the first choice” of the committee, “but it was the choice we had.” Southers added that in the past, actions have been reactive, and now the school has a chance to be “preemptive.”
Anastassia Tzoytzoyrakos, master lecturer at Bovard, asked why alternative formats of Tabassum’s speech were not considered. The provost answered that the nature of her speech, in-person or not, still provides a “focal point” on the university campus, which shares the same threat.
Tabassum told CNN that “they did not tell me about any specific threats.” While unspecific in the nature or number of threats towards the valedictorian or the campus before the decision, Kim said, “if we had gone forward and something happened, legally and morally there would be no forgiveness with such clear indication of potential risks.”
Southers added that last year’s commencement received a total of 352 threats, “which you didn’t hear about.” The number of threats this year toward the valedictorian specifically or the larger campus Guzman stated was not disclosed.
Southers noted this weekend’s LA Times Festival of Books, an event that draws thousands of people to campus every year, and thus a security matter as well, is also on the safety department’s approaching radar. “We have to get to commencement.”
Mohammed Zain Shafi Khan contributed reporting to this article.
This story has been updated to clarify that Guzman did not directly name Folt during Wednesday’s meeting.