The People’s Commencement

At Columbia: It’s 1968 all over again, as New York Ivy Leaguers flip the script and stage an unofficial counter-graduation ceremony at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

Illustration by João Fazenda

Thus begins Andrew Marantz's On Campus article in the June 3, 2024 issue of The New Yorker. As a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Abq Jew finds this article very upsetting.

And rather than attempt to summarize it, Abq Jew here presents to you, his loyal readers, the whole thing - in complete violation of an entire plethora of US copyright laws, UN resolutions, and international conventions. 

Please, copyright lawyers, consider this fair use - or even a free promotion! And stay tuned for a (brief) discussion at the end.

On Campus

The People’s Commencement at Columbia

It’s 1968 all over again, as New York Ivy Leaguers flip the script
and stage an unofficial counter-graduation ceremony
at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

By Andrew Marantz
May 25, 2024

In the spring of 1968, after a series of antiwar demonstrations and a police raid on Columbia’s campus, protesters ended the semester with a “counter-commencement.” “while columbia dances its obscene ceremony,” a flyer read, “we will open a liberation school for all people.” 

At the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the historian Richard Hofstadter gave the official commencement address; hundreds of students walked out in protest and marched a few blocks north to an alternative graduation ceremony, where the writer Dwight Macdonald and others delivered remarks on the library steps. 

“While I find your strike and your sit-ins productive, I don’t think these tactics can be used indefinitely without doing more damage than good to the university,” Macdonald said.

This spring, during another series of antiwar demonstrations and student arrests at Columbia, a group of sympathetic faculty and staff organized another counter-commencement. 

“We looked through the historical archives for inspiration,” Manu Karuka, a professor of American studies at Barnard, said. “We even used a font reminiscent of the ’68 program.” 

The 2024 program featured a drawing of a red poppy, a symbol of Palestinian resistance, above the words “The People’s Graduation: A Gathering for Peace and Justice.” 

A supplementary handout included a list of Barnard’s “distrustees,” along with top Columbia administrators and their e-mail addresses, and an acknowledgment in fine print: “This shitshow would not have been possible without these cruel and incompetent people.”

The locations were flipped this year. The counter-commencement was held at St. John the Divine, whose clergy had offered it to the university community as a sanctuary. (Columbia’s main graduation was supposed to take place in the middle of campus, until, at the last minute, it was cancelled.) 

Ilan Cohen, who was graduating with a dual degree from Columbia and the Jewish Theological Seminary, started the day at a small J.T.S. ceremony, where attendees sang both the American and the Israeli national anthems and Wolf Blitzer gave the commencement speech (“You stand at a crossroads in American history, and Jewish history”). 

Afterward, Cohen, who had participated in the student encampment, walked briskly toward the cathedral, wearing a robin’s-egg-blue robe and a beet-red yarmulke. He carried three pins—“Columbia Jews for Ceasefire,” “JTS Jews for Ceasefire,” and “Not in My Name”—and deliberated over which to wear. “No pins, I’m sorry,” a volunteer usher said. “Church rules.” The rules failed to prevent posters, banners, or slogans on mortarboards (“Free Palestine”; “Student Intifada”; “Glory to the Class of 2024 of Gaza”). 

Someone handed Cohen a parody newspaper called the New York War Crimes—the “Nakba Day Edition” (“All the Consent That’s Fit to Manufacture”). As Cohen looked for a seat, he ran into Frank Guridy, a history professor with whom he had taken a course called Columbia 1968. They posed for a photo, and Guridy asked about Cohen’s plans. “Haven’t had a second to think about it,” he said.

The actress and comedian Amanda Seales, a Columbia alum, was the m.c. “Today, in the spirit of 1968, we gather in what gentrifiers call Morningside Heights but the real ones know is Harlem,” she began. A full cathedral—a few dozen faculty and special guests onstage, a few hundred students in the pews—cheered. 

Seales introduced Randa Jarrar, a Palestinian American writer and activist. “In 1799, Napoleon invaded Palestine,” Jarrar said, then led the audience in a chant: “We defeated Napoleon!” “We are defeating Israel!” “We defeated Columbia!” “We are dismantling this empire!” 

A Palestinian American poet named Fady Joudah read a poem called “Dedication,” fighting back tears; Noura Erakat, a human-rights lawyer, told the students, “You have taught us well—in your sacrifice, in your courage, in your ingenuity.” A few backpack-wearing cathedral tourists took photos in chastened silence, then quickly left.

To close out the ceremony, Seales introduced a band called the Liberated Zone, “a ragtag collective of musically inclined radicals, scholars, and truthtellers who met while jamming at the Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” 

Six musicians, half of them barefoot, performed a two-chord folk song based on a verse from the Book of Ruth. Then the grads marched out, applauded by faculty waiting on the steps. Clumps of students stood chatting about summer plans and upcoming disciplinary hearings, or breaking into brief chants (“Disclose! Divest! We will not stop, we will not rest”). 

A Barnard professor invited Cohen to join her protest singing group, Voices of Witness. Cohen had been part of a “pluralistic Jewish a-cappella group,” he said, “and this was the year we really had to figure out what pluralism meant.”

“How’d that go?” the professor asked.

“Well,” Cohen said, “we just had to appoint two students to be mediators next year, if that gives you an idea.” ♦

Abq Jew sadly admits he doesn't have
the foggiest idea how that is gonna work.

Not to pick on Ilan Cohen - it's not just him! -
but you would think that Jewish day school learning,
an Ivy League education, plus studies at JTS
would add up to more than this.
But you'd be wrong.

Even (Especially?) after the hostages' rescue on Shabbat,
the American Jewish community has been soundly
kicked under the bus. It's not just that many of our
former friends, colleagues, and allies have abandoned us -
they've actively turned against us and joined
with those who seek our destruction. 

Yes, our Jewish history offers parallels to what is happening
all around us. But we've just celebrated Shavuot.
Let's try to stay happy.