Anti-Israel Student Protesters Disrupt George Washington University Commencement

Anti-Israel student protesters disrupted George Washington University’s commencement ceremony on Sunday, chanting slogans during remarks delivered by university president Ellen Granberg before ultimately walking out.

At the outset of the ceremony, as Provost Christopher Bracey addressed the crowd, faint anti-Israel chants could be heard from just outside the cordoned-off section of the National Mall where GW held its commencement. It was not until board of trustees chairwoman Grace Speights introduced Granberg, though, that graduating students began their demonstration.

Holding a banner bearing the words “YOUR TUITION FUNDS GENOCIDE,” the students booed Granberg, yelled “Shame!” and chanted slogans such as “Granberg, Granberg, we know you,” “Free, free Palestine,” “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest,” and “Israel bombs, GW pays, how many kids have you killed today?”

That first group of student protesters walked to the back of the seating area, but that was not the last the audience would hear of them. When Granberg once again took to the stage to introduce honorary-degree recipients, the activists erupted in a chorus of boos. They shouted “Shame!” once more and continued their chants of “Granberg, Granberg, we know you, you imprison students, too,” “You endanger students, too,” and “GW funds genocide, walk out for Palestine,” before heading to the exit to cheers from those outside.

The chants about Granberg having “imprison[ed]” and “endanger[ed]” GW students referenced the clearing of the anti-Israel encampment on the university’s campus that stood for two weeks before the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) took action. Students at the encampment had defaced a statue of George Washington, projected messages such as “GLORY TO THE MARTYRS OF PALESTINE” and “US EMPIRE WILL FALL GAZA WILL PREVAIL” on university buildings, and called for the execution of GW administrators. A day before MPD officers ejected the activists from the lawn, hundreds of protesters gathered outside Granberg’s house, banging drums and yelling slogans.

Outside the area of the Mall where GW held its commencement ceremony, the students who walked out joined an ongoing rally. One of the student organizers — who told the crowd that she was originally from Egypt — commended her audience for disrupting the day’s proceedings, leading chants of “Shut it down,” calling for a “student-led revolution,” and urging those in attendance to “globalize the intifada.” The protesters compared the “IOF” — short for “Israeli Occupation Forces,” their term for the Israel Defense Forces — and the MPD to the Ku Klux Klan and chanted, in Arabic, “From the water to the water, Palestine is Arab.”

The students gathered outside the ceremony area concluded their rally with an Arabic-language chant that translates to “Raise, raise, raise the flag of the revolution,” while a man wrapped in a keffiyeh waved an oversized Palestinian flag.

Though the vast majority of the protesters appeared to be college-aged, and some adorned their graduation regalia with keffiyehs and other anti-Israel symbols, others were clearly older. Two members of this cohort were Code Pink leaders Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright, both of whom have become recognizable faces through their interruption of congressional hearings and press conferences. Their organization blamed Israel for Hamas’s October 7 attack and described the terrorist group’s atrocities as legitimate resistance. Code Pink, which is heavily funded by pro–Chinese Communist Party benefactor Neville Roy Singham, signaled its support for the Houthis after attacks on American ships and has a history of using children in its political activities.

Despite the presence of professional activists such as Benjamin and Wright, it was students who led the disruption of the ceremony and the rally, chanting “Granberg, Granberg, you’re a coward, we the students have the power,” as security looked on.