PSC members protested during the College of Staten Island commencement May 28 to denounce President Timothy Lynch’s mandate that the ceremony feature a pre-recorded student speaker rather than a live one for the second year in a row.
The protest at CSI (Photo courtesy of Eleni Tournaki).
Clarion had previously reported that CSI faculty had joined with students to protest the decision, which they believed was an affront to academic freedom and freedom of speech. Campuses around the country have experienced such decisions at commencement, which are largely seen to put a damper on students who might use a live speech to give support to student protests against the genocide in Gaza.
Jonathan Cope, the PSC chapter chair at CSI, said, “While we understand that the administration has a lot of formal authority over commencement ceremonies, this decision felt like a violation of the spirit of free speech and open inquiry that we have dedicated so much of our time to fostering in our students and community. To many in the CSI community, it felt like the decision had turned what should have been a celebratory day to honor the work of our students into something far more grim–a community cowering in fear from the authoritarian suppression of speech.”
He continued, “Faculty have voiced their disagreement with the decision consistently for the past year. A faculty governance committee representing a diverse group formed in the fall of 2025 and produced a document with–in my view–very reasonable recommendations for the commencement ceremony in 2026 year so that live, in-person speeches could resume. Those recommendations were ignored and set the stage for our protests at the ceremony this year. Each faculty member who participated had their own reasons for doing so, but an impressive coalition of faculty with a range of perspectives were able to coalesce around a simple principle: ‘Let them speak.’”
The Staten Island Advance reported, “During the College of Staten Island’s 77th Commencement some faculty and students protested in support of Palestinians and free speech. They turned their backs in protest while [President] Lynch was speaking.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education also reported on the protest, as Kenneth Gold, chair of the CSI College Council, told the paper that prerecording student speeches “diminishes our portrait of a graduate,” and that “This is a highly visible indication that the college doesn’t really trust the students, not even those that it’s selected for the highest academic honors.”
Deborah DeSimone, chair of the college’s Faculty Senate, told the Chronicle that not having a live student speaker was a blow to the students. “We talk about teachable moments. Well, this is a huge teachable moment for a 22-year-old to address a crowd of over a thousand people. That’s a huge honor and it’s a huge moment in someone’s life.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education also reported that “chants of ‘Let them speak!; erupted from the crowd,” adding that, “The provost moved on without acknowledgement.”
The graduating class at the School of Law also interrupted the interim dean’s speech at graduation May 21 to protest the lack of any student speaker at their graduation. A student-led ceremony was held after commencement in a park in Washington Heights, where students and faculty denounced the decision not to include a student speaker at graduation.
