After Harvard Divinity School declined to release this year’s commencement address when one of the speakers deviated from the prepared remarks to recognise the genocide in Gaza, as reported by *The intercept* last month, the publication is now making Zehra Imam’s portion of the speech available to the public for the first time.

The decision to suppress the speech occurred as Harvard University was receiving public commendation for refusing to comply wiht demands from the Trump governance in its stated fight against antisemitism at universities, which the administration has used to justify a crackdown on speech advocating for Palestinian rights. Earlier this week, President TRUMP again threatened to cut off all federal funding to Harvard after his administration persistent that the school had violated the Civil Rights Act and tolerated antisemitism on campus.

The school had “been in some cases deliberately indifferent,and in others has been a willful participant in anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students,faculty,and staff,” TRUMP’s Joint Task Force to combat Anti-Semitism argued in a letter to Harvard President ALAN GARBER on Monday. Harvard stated that it disagreed with the administration’s findings and took allegations of antisemitism on campus seriously.

This was the latest development in a monthslong battle between President DONALD TRUMP and Harvard over his sweeping demands for changes at the school, including ending diversity and equity practices, censoring curriculum, and punishing pro-palestine student protesters. The school has been praised for its resistance to these efforts and its lawsuit against the TRUMP administration over the president’s order to bar international students, which a judge blocked earlier this week.

However, sources speaking to *The Intercept* indicate that Harvard has been quietly giving in to TRUMP’s threats. Students and staff at the Divinity School connected the school’s refusal to publish the commencement speech to its efforts to dismantle a program that offered a trip to the West Bank and coursework on Israel and Palestine. While the U.S. government and mainstream media focus on Harvard’s handling of antisemitism, findings from a concurrent investigation into anti-Arab,anti-Muslim,and anti-Palestinian bias at the school have received less attention. In January, Harvard settled a lawsuit alleging discrimination against Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students.

According to *The Intercept*, Harvard cited “security concerns” as the reason for not publishing the video of IMAM’s speech and made a password-protected version temporarily available to users with harvard logins. students and staff at the Divinity School called the decision unusual,noting that past speeches had been readily available.

Zehra imam’s Suppressed Speech

“Palestine is waiting for you to arrive. And you must be courageous enough to rise to the call because Palestine will keep showing up in your living rooms…”

Here is the full text of the suppressed commencement speech by ZEHRA IMAM:

Class of 2025, Palestine is waiting for you to arrive. And you must be courageous enough to rise to the call as Palestine will keep showing up in your living rooms until you are ready to meet its gaze.

Here, I must acknowledge that, together in the wilderness, we have witnessed the risks that have come with speaking up for this very genocide to be far-reaching. Yet no matter how charged with punishments the scroll, again and again, we witness too the enormous hearts, unwavering courage, and profound wisdom of students like Believe Ozturk, Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawiand countless others who are in this very audience with us today, such as Elom Tettey-Tamaklo, our freind and classmate who continues to show up not just for Palestine but for each of us by extending to us the water we need in our most vulnerable moments.

Together, we must refuse to be ruled by the tyrants of our time because our liberations are intertwined.

We gather now to take our second census.

The three of us stand before you not because it was easy to do this together but because it was absolutely vital in a world that has given us chasms so wide no bridge seems to want to meet us along the path. We chose to do this anyway and carve our own path by not lying to one another on the journey. These moments when we dream together in the wilderness are when we absolutely need each other. An honest reckoning is what can prepare us for those dreams of humanity that will endure.

my final poetry session with students in Gaza was on freedom. I asked them: What would the first day of freedom look like? How would it feel on a sensory level? What colors would the day bear; who would they embrace; what scents would come alive on this day of liberation; what tastes would be fulfilled? I leave us with a response from my student and Palestinian writer Duha Hasan’s dream of freedom:

I had a dream

I went back home

Slept on my bed

Felt warmth again

I had a dream

I went to college

Nagged all day

How hectic it was

I had a dream

I wanted to live

I had a dream

I had my favorite meal

I had a dream

My ears forgot the war’s sounds

shouting, bombardment, mother’s sobs, and losses

I had a dream

My eyes forgot the blood, the loss, the patience

Obligatory patience

My nose forgot the smoke smell, the deaths, the corpse rotten

My hands stopped shivering

My body skipped what I had lived

I had a dream

Not panicking

Not imagining death everywhere

I had a dream