The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Alex Morey) discusses the incident; I also commented on it yesterday morning on AirTalk (with Larry Mantle) on an L.A. radio station yesterday; for more about the material that the valedictorian had apparently posted online, see this Daily Mail (James Gordon) story. An excerpt from the FIRE piece:
The University of Southern California on Monday canceled a planned commencement speech by class valedictorian Asna Tabassum following criticism of Tabassum's online commentary about Israel.
In an email to the campus community, USC Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Andrew T. Guzman said canceling the speech was "necessary to maintain the safety of our campus and students" due to "substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement."
But with no sense that USC actually received any threats or took any steps to secure the event short of canceling it, this instead looks like a calculated move to quiet the critics — without creating new ones by overtly censoring the student or yanking her valedictorian status.
Of course, no student has the right to be valedictorian. At USC, it's an academic honor USC can give out as the institution sees fit. But once USC has selected a student for this honor, canceling her speech based on criticism of her viewpoint definitely implicates the campus speech climate in important ways.
