ATLANTA, May 19 — US President Joe Biden delivered the commencement address at Morehouse College today, receiving applause and cheers but also spurring some students to turn...
US President Joe Biden addresses Morehouse College graduates during a commencement ceremony in Atlanta, Georgia, May 19, 2024. — Reuters picATLANTA, May 19 — US President Joe Biden delivered the commencement address at Morehouse College today, receiving applause and cheers but also spurring some students to turn their backs to Biden as his backing of Israel in its war with Hamas riles college graduations across the country.
Biden also made remarks more typical of traditional commencement addresses, saying: Education “makes you free. And a Morehouse education makes you fearless.” Morehouse was founded in 1867 to educate Black people newly liberated from slavery, and its alumni include the civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. The US president has lavished attention on historically Black colleges and universities, directed billions in funding to them and praised them as tools of enhanced economic mobility.
“It is my stance as a Morehouse man, nay as a human being, to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip,” said Morehouse 2024 valedictorian DeAngelo Jeremiah Fletcher. Biden applauded. White House aides sounded out the mood on the Morehouse campus in recent weeks, where some staff and students had called for the president’s invitation to be rescinded over his support for Israel and their discomfort with an address during campaign season.
Some Black students have drawn parallels between the experience of stateless Palestinians and historical experiences in apartheid South Africa and the Jim Crow South, which motivated earlier generations of protest. Israeli and US officials reject those comparisons.
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