Morehouse College is poised to reveal President Joe Biden as its commencement speaker for May 19. Yet, certain faculty members have expressed reservations regarding this choice.
In an email to faculty members on Friday, Kendrick Brown, Morehouse College’s provost and senior vice president for academic affairs stated, “This week, I received an inquiry from concerned faculty about rumors they were hearing about President Biden’s selection as the 2024 Commencement speaker,”
Furthermore, Brown stated his intention to organize a virtual meeting on Thursday, providing an avenue for faculty members with varying viewpoints regarding the choice of our commencement speaker to pose questions and offer comments.
Additionally, he mentioned that students would have the opportunity to interact with Morehouse College President David Thomas.
Brown did not provide additional comment in response to a request, and a representative from Morehouse declined to elaborate further.
However, an individual familiar with the situation at Morehouse College expressed that administrators fear faculty members may participate in protests alongside students during the commencement ceremony.
The criticism of President Joe Biden is stemming from his support of Israel in its war against Hamas. Protests over this began to erupt at more and more college campuses. As a result of the backlash, Biden as well as other top administrators have drastically decreased the amount of college appearances they’ve been making.
Kendrick Brown went on to detail in the email that Morehouse extended the offer to President Biden back in September and the college had plans of announcing the news early this week.
“The College does not plan to rescind its accepted invitation to President Biden. The meeting Thursday is a forum for discussion and to respond to questions about the invitation that was extended and accepted,” Brown wrote.
Students advocating against the war in Gaza can be seen on many different college campuses, just like Morehouse.
Morehouse student Calvin Bell said, “Students are not in favor of the way in which the United States has handled this situation, and are surely not in favor of the trauma and the pain and the genocide that the Palestinian people are going through — but also that innocent civilians and Israel are going through as well.”
According to a source close to the commencement, “It’s not been a secret nationwide, if not globally, that there are a lot of concerns … about how the war has been handled and how America and the presidency has been in the war. We’ve heard conversations like that. There’s also plenty of people who are excited to have a sitting president as their commencement speaker.”
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