UMich: After October 7, Muslim students get special graduation, Jews don’t
Rachel Dawson oversaw the Office of Multicultural Initiatives (OAMI) before getting axed over antisemitic comments
Never before seen footage of the University of Michigan’s Middle Eastern (MENA) graduation ceremony in May reveals that the recently fired antisemitic professor chose to create a special graduation ceremony for Middle Eastern students after the October 7 attack on Israel.
Rachel Dawson, former Director of the UMich Office for Multicultural Initiatives (OAMI), was just terminated after making remarks like “We don’t work with Jews. They are wealthy and privileged and take care of themselves” and that “Jewish people have no genetic DNA that would connect them to the land of Israel.”
Dawson’s OAMI oversaw a number of special graduation ceremonies for minority students. One such event is the annual Middle Eastern Graduation Celebration, the inaugural of which Dawson’s OAMI created after the October 7 attacks in Israel. No special graduations were created for Jewish students.
Private footage of the ceremony obtained by Liberty Affair paints a picture of graduates and faculty alike clothed in Palestinian keffiyehs grieving the war in Palestine, and student leaders vowing to “liberate Palestine from the river to the sea” to an audience of over 300 students and parents.
Two pro-Palestine students were chosen to speak, one of which is Salma Hamamy, a Palestinian student that has lead over 20 anti-Israel protests. She confessed to the audience that protesting Palestine was her top priority at college — not her academics like studying and homework.
“My time in class is not spent watching the professor’s slides on the projector, but rather watching the graphic images of once functional Gazan schools and infrastructure,” she told students.
“I can confidently say my time here has not been determined by research... but rather the crises that unfold thousands of miles away…. I joined the Palestinian advocacy group on campus. Since then I've had the honor of serving the club for three years,” she said.
Hamany has regularly been credited with leading protests at UMich that cause multiple classes to be cancelled or disrupted in her capacity as the president of the school’s SJP group, SAVE UMICH. Rather than applauding students for their academics, she praised martyrs and protesters instead.
"Our student leaders are best when they organize walkouts to protest Gaza. Our leaders and best are the ones who march in the thousands, chanting for a liberated Palestine from the river to the sea” she said to the crowd.
Rachel Dawson, the axed diversity head, wrote to the 2024 MENA graduates in a pamphlet on the school’s website. While the MENA graduation is supposed to include North Africans, no such students were featured at the graduation, raising the concern that she created the special event just for Muslim students after the October 7 attack and resulting invasion of Gaza.
“I know that as you celebrate with pride, unfortunately, many of you also must grieve the loss of family and friends throughout the Middle East, and grapple with the trauma you face as a result of racism, harassment, and discrimination in our world and on our campus,” she wrote.
Jasmine Elkharssa, the second keynote speaker, echoed similar sentiments while wearing a pendant of Israel, as if to claim Israel was for Muslims, echoing the popular sentiment of “from the river to the sea” that dreams of Palestinians taking over Israel’s land.
“I'm holding in my words today the dreams lost. Whether Gaza to Sudan, Iraq to Syria, we're all collectively grieving genocide,” she said while wearing a pendant of Israel and a keffiyah.
“I’d be remiss if I did not acknowledge that today, we’re entering our 10th day of our anti-Israel encampment on the quad, where we’ve been camping day and night to pressure this university to divest from the genocide in Gaza, apartheid in Israel,” said Elkharssa.
“At this very moment, some of our very own graduates are not going to walk the stage as they chose to say in the encampments to protest Israel and put their bodies on the line to fight for Palestinian liberation,” the UMich graduate explained.
The MENA graduation ceremony was held May 1, 2024 and the footage was uploaded in May. According to the WayBackMachine, the link to the footage was dropped on the diversity office’s webpage sometime in August and I was alerted to the footage on Saturday.
The University of Michigan did not respond to requests for comment.
This article will be updated as new information comes in.
This article was written by Toni Airaksinen, a journalist living in Delray Beach, Florida. If you’d like to stay on top of college antisemitism news, please follow her here on Substack, Twitter or Instagram. If you enjoyed this, consider Buying Her a Coffee.
I won't go through the words and sentiments bit by bit. Thanks for putting it up.
"wearing a pendant of Israel, as if to claim Israel was for Muslims"
what? she's wearing a pendant of Palestine. when a Jew wears a pendant of Israel, is it as if to claim Israel is for Jews?