Wokester correctness lands USC in a pickle over its pro-Hamas valedictorian By Monica Showalter
“Of all the candidates they had for valedictorian, they had to pick a pro-Hamas fanatic?”
With grade inflation, the University of Southern California had more than 100 applicants to choose from in its quest to find a valedictorian for its coming graduation ceremony in May.
They picked a pro-Hamas militant in a hijab, likely intending to show off their DEI cred. Not surprisingly, they drew protests.
How’d you like to be a Jewish parent of a young graduate at that huge ceremony attended by 65,000, and have to listen to pro-Hamas hectoring along with a heaping helping of antisemitism?
Of course it drew protests. They should have predicted it would draw protests.
So someone at USC ordered the speaking event altogether, claiming it was a security matter.
According to the Los Angeles Times:
Saying “tradition must give way to safety,” USC on Monday made the unprecedented move of canceling the upcoming graduation speech of an undergraduate valedictorian who has come under fire for her pro-Palestinian views.
The move, according to USC officials, is the first time the university has banned a valedictorian from the traditional chance to speak onstage at the annual commencement ceremony, which typically draws more than 65,000 people to the Los Angeles campus.
In a campuswide letter, USC Provost Andrew T. Guzman cited unnamed threats that have poured in shortly after the university publicized the valedictorian’s name and biography this month. Guzman said attacks against the student for her pro-Palestinian views have reached an “alarming tenor” and “escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement” in May.
Which is baloney. Last I read, it was Jewish people getting hounded at their homes and killed by pro-Hamas militants in Los Angeles at protests, not the other way around.
USC itself flashed its woke cred by banning an elderly longtime Jewish professor named John Strauss for telling pro-Hamas protestors that Hamas “should be killed,” which was a reasonable statement in light of what they did on October 7, and in any case, free speech.
In every case, the pro-Hamas side was the problem. So now the school effectively blaming Jews for ‘threats’ is quite a stretch. I don’t believe them, and no, they haven’t provided any evidence of it.
More likely, money talks in this wokester academic enclave, and the donor exodus seen at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania in light of their ineffective defense of Jewish students had something to do with this.
According to Wikipedia:
USC has an endowment of $8.1 billion and carries out nearly $1 billion per year in sponsored research.[3] USC became the only university to receive eight separate nine-figure gifts: $120 million from Ambassador Walter Annenberg to create the Annenberg Center for Communication and a later additional gift of $100 million for the USC Annenberg School for Communication; $112.5 million from Alfred Mann to establish the Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering; $110 million from the W. M. Keck Foundation for USC’s School of Medicine; $150 million from the W. M. Keck Foundation for USC’s School of Medicine; $175 million from George Lucas to the USC School of Cinema-Television, now renamed USC School of Cinematic Arts, $200 million from Dana and David Dornsife for USC’s College of Letters, Arts and Sciences to support undergraduate and PhD programs, $110 million from John and Julie Mork for undergraduate scholarships, and $200 million from Larry Ellison to launch the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine.
Many of those names are Jewish, because Los Angeles has a very large Jewish population. Most of a university’s big donors, according to CNN, sit on the board of trustees — and the list for USC is here. I look at that list and wonder whether someone like Miriam Adelson, the widow of Sheldon, who was famous for his fairly conservative philanthropy, would like to stick around with USC if the valedictorian was a pro-Hamas hectorer shouting at her.
According to USC’s 2020 financial report, they had been experiencing deficits and rely on donors to fill the holes:
For the year ending June 30, 2020, USC experienced an operating deficit before insurance recoveries of $82
million. This operating loss would have been far greater without the support of the university community
and managing costs through cuts in discretionary spending, a pause in new hires and merit increases,
reduced capital spending and by voluntary salary cuts by senior leadership. Operating expenses before
insurance recoveries for the year ending June 30, 2020, were $5.5 billion. In addition, the university
recognized $108.5 million in insurance recoveries for an increase in net assets from operating activities of
$26 million. Despite the challenges related to COVID-19, the university had an increase in net assets for the
year ending June 30, 2020 of $246 million, which is largely a result of the endowment performance and
continued giving by our donors before and after the pandemic.
Their contributions were not as high as they used to be:
In aggregate, contributions included in the university’s consolidated financial statements totaled $447 million in 2020, no change compared to 2019 contribution revenue of $447 million.
The USC chart for that passage shows that contributions were as high as $610 million in 2017, so the figure, while flat on the year earlier, took quite a tumble from previous trends.
In addition, a lot of their money is ‘conditional’:
Conditional pledges for the university, which depend on the occurrence of specified future and uncertain events, were $273 million and $317 million as of June 30, 2020 and 2019, respectively.
According to USC’s 2023 financial statement:
For the years ended June 30, 2023 and 2022, the university recognized approximately $147,000,000 and $131,000,000 of private contracts and grants revenue in contributions on the consolidated statements of activities
Restricted donations at around $5 million account for about a third of their $16 million in assets, according to the statement on page 15.
That could be a lot of money that walks if this valedictorian becomes the face of the university, hectoring the parents and donors about the supposed badness of Israel and the importance of supporting Hamas, bringing up sob stories that no one can verify. Harvard was getting about 45% of its budget from donors. Best I could tell from the USC records, it looks like about a third.
Naturally, she’s saying she’s the victim now:
In a statement, [valedictorian-elect Asna] Tabassum opposed the decision, saying USC has “abandoned” her.
“Although this should have been a time of celebration for my family, friends, professors, and classmates, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian voices have subjected me to a campaign of racist hatred because of my uncompromising belief in human rights for all,” said Tabassum, who is Muslim.
“This campaign to prevent me from addressing my peers at commencement has evidently accomplished its goal: today, USC administrators informed me that the university will no longer allow me to speak at commencement due to supposed security concerns,” she wrote.
And she has CAIR’s support:
Pro-Palestinian groups, including the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, have called for USC to reinvite Tabassum to speak.
“USC cannot hide its cowardly decision behind a disingenuous concern for ‘security,’” CAIR-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush said in a statement.
The point being, who the heck picked this person from a hundred applicants? They couldn’t find one applicant whom they could count on to not create a stink and insult a large part of the university community? They couldn’t find anyone to not bring up the Gaza war seen on the news? They had to show us all how woke they were by picking this fanatic?
Now they’ve got egg all over their faces, having to tell the valedictorian to zip it, and all because of their urge to stay woke and roll out that political correctness. You wonder what the phone calls from donors were like that led to this.
Good luck dealing with CAIR, USC. You dropped yourself into this, and all because DEI, not the merit and collegiality of the past, had the most to do with your choice of valedictorian.
Comments are closed.
