Officials at the City University of New York School of Law, after coming under criticism over the past two years for featuring commencement speakers who focused on opposing Israel and supporting Palestinians, will have no outside speakers or keynote address at Thursday's graduation ceremonies.
The decision has been coming for some time, The New York Times reported.
In September, before Hamas launched its Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, CUNY announced that there would be no student speaker at the commencement ceremony. That led to a lawsuit from several of the school's students last spring who claimed that their First Amendment rights were being denied by not allowing a speaker who the students elected to speak.
Meanwhile, two scheduled speakers, pulled out of the event, leaving the ceremony without speakers: American Civil Liberties Union President Deborah Archer and litigator Muhammad Faridi.
CUNY also announced in April that the May 23 ceremony was being moved off campus to Harlem's historic Apollo Theater, which will require guests to have tickets and will limit the number of attendees.
Archer said that she was compelled to decline to speak, telling students in an email that she could not, "as a leader of the nation's oldest guardian of free expression, participate in an event in which students believe that their voices are being excluded."
Several other colleges have canceled or amended their ceremonies after weeks of campus protests, but CUNY, a public law school, has been a center for pro-Palestinian activism for years, and tensions over Israel have led to the lawsuit.
The federal complaint, filed in Manhattan in April, had been brought by eight people who are still law students or will soon graduate. They claim that CUNY was engaged in viewpoint discrimination by blocking a peer from speaking at the graduation.
The school has also blocked people from recording or livestreaming the ceremony, and this year's guidelines reflect "a repression of speech related to Palestine," the complaint claims.
In 2022, the students picked a Palestinian student, whose name was not included in the lawsuit, whose speech criticized Israel, leading to public officials calling her comments antisemitic.
Last year's student was Fatima Mousa Mohammed, a Yemeni immigrant who denounced "Israeli settler colonialism," leading to more criticism from lawmakers, including Mayor Eric Adams, another graduation speaker, who called the speech divisive.
One advocacy group called for the law school's Dean Sudha Setty to resign, and the CUNY chancellor and board of trustees later called Mohammed's comments "hate speech."
The law school said the school has held graduations in the past that did not include a speaker picked by students, and Setty said this year that CUNY has been "working hard" to honor its students and meet the needs of the community, and not allow controversy and protests to overshadow their achievements.
"The world needs more lawyers who serve the public interest — and we are looking forward to giving them a joyful send-off," her statement said.