The seeds of the USC crisis were sown in March when Provost Andrew T. Guzman notified Tabassum that she was valedictorian. Her reward: joining the “main stage” commencement on May 10 to give a 3-to-5-minute address.

On April 2, Folt and Guzman took part in an Academic Honors Convocation in a campus ballroom with Tabassum and others.

“I’m looking at a roomful of multi-hyphenates,” Folt said, according to USC Today, which featured a group picture of the smiling president with Tabassum behind her in a light green hijab. Folt said students inspired her because they were “expanding that personal search for meaning to include something very important: benefiting humanity.”

Pro-Israel groups quickly seized on Tabassum’s selection, accusing the university of caving to antisemitism.

“What will she say at the podium?” said an April 9 Instagram post by groups including We Are Tov and Israel War Room that went viral.

The complaints centered on a pro-Palestinian link on Tabassum’s Instagram profile. The link to a “Free Palestine” site said, “Zionism is a racist settler-colonialist ideology.” It added that “one Palestinian state would mean Palestinian liberation and the complete abolishment of the state of Israel” so that “both Arabs and Jews can live together.”

Six days later, on April 15, USC announced that Tabassum would no longer appear on the commencement stage, citing security concerns. The university has not provided more details about the nature of the threats, and the LAPD said it had not received reports of threats to Tabassum or the commencement.

In an interview at the time, Guzman, the provost, said Folt was not behind the decision to cancel the speech. A day later, Joel Curran, USC’s senior vice president of communications, contradicted Guzman, saying the final decision was indeed the president’s.

Some faculty, administrators and parents of students questioned why the selection process did not include vetting of social media. Although the provost cited “the expectations of federal regulators” in explaining why Tabassum’s speech was canceled, many faculty saw a clear desire to prevent the type of congressional hearings on antisemitism that wrought havoc for the presidents of Harvard, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania.

“It’s part of larger crises in academia,” said Nguyen. “Universities are under a right-wing attack.”

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