NYU withholds diploma of student who condemned Israel’s Gaza genocide

In the latest example of escalating repression against Palestine solidarity activism on US campuses, New York University (NYU) has withheld the diploma of student speaker Logan Rozos after he used his commencement address to denounce Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and the US’s complicity.

Rozos, graduating from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualised Study, told his fellow students on Wednesday: “The only thing that is appropriate to say in this time and to a group this large is a recognition of the atrocities currently happening in Palestine.” 

READ: US freezes funding for Cornell, Northwestern University in latest crackdown on pro-Palestine protests

In his speech, Rozos condemned the genocide “supported politically and militarily by the United States, paid for by our tax dollars and livestreamed to our phones for the past 18 months.” He further stated: “I do not wish to speak only to my own politics today, but to speak for all people of conscience, and all people who feel the moral injury of this atrocity.”

“I condemn this genocide and complicity in this genocide.”

NYU student Logan Rozos denounced Israel’s genocide in Gaza during his graduation speech to roaring applause. In retaliation, NYU has withheld his diploma and is threatening further disciplinary action. pic.twitter.com/VzjRoOAq2k

— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) May 15, 2025

Razos’s remarks were met with widespread applause from students. NYU swiftly responded by issuing a statement denouncing Rozos, accusing him of violating university rules and announcing it would withhold his diploma pending disciplinary action.

The university also removed Rozos’s student profile from its website, adding to concerns about institutional retaliation.

NYU deleted a page highlighting Logan Rozos from its website last night at approx. 8:30 p.m.

The pages for the other eight highlighted students, including 2025 graduates, are still live.https://t.co/1oUjvNBzAQ https://t.co/6FLHITKh6i pic.twitter.com/mtgzETRq9z

— Jacqueline Sweet (@JSweetLI) May 15, 2025

This incident comes amid a wider crackdown on free speech and pro-Palestinian activism at US universities. NYU, like many elite institutions, has adopted the highly controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which conflates political opposition to Zionism and Israel’s colonial violence with anti-Jewish hatred. Critics, including human rights scholars and Jewish groups, warn that such measures are being weaponised to suppress Palestinian advocacy and silence dissenting voices.

Rozos’s speech, and NYU’s reaction, follows a pattern of repression at the university. Over the past year, NYU administrators have called police to disperse peaceful encampments and arrested dozens of students and faculty protesting Israel’s war on Gaza. The university has also updated its conduct guidelines to classify phrases such as “Zionist” as discriminatory, explicitly erasing the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

In December 2024, NYU declared two tenured professors, Andrew Ross and Sonya Posmentier, “persona non grata” after they joined a sit-in demanding the university divest from companies profiting from Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Months later, NYU cancelled a talk by Doctors Without Borders’ former president Dr Joanne Liu, deeming her slides on Gaza civilian casualties potentially “anti-Semitic.”

Human rights advocates and academic freedom organisations have condemned these actions, warning that universities like NYU are sacrificing core principles of free speech and academic independence under pressure from pro-Israel donors, political figures, and lobby groups.

Rozos’s speech, which framed Israel’s war on Gaza as a genocide livestreamed in real time, resonates with warnings from genocide scholars, legal experts and international bodies that Israel’s actions meet the legal definition of genocide. Despite this, Rozos now faces institutional reprisals for expressing what many human rights defenders see as an urgent moral truth.

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