IN ATLANTA — President Joe Biden will have the most direct interaction with college students since the start of the Israel-Hamas war when he gives the commencement address at Morehouse College. The college is a hub for Black politics and culture.
Atlanta is the largest city in Georgia, a swing state that Biden took from President Trump four years ago. This is where Morehouse is located. Biden’s speech on Sunday comes as the Democrat tries to connect with young Black men, who are a key and symbolic group of voters, and fix the coalition of different groups that helped him win the presidency.
When the speech was announced last month, there were peaceful protests and calls for the university to cancel because of how Biden was handling the war between Israel and Hamas. Some students at Morehouse and other historically black campuses in Atlanta say they strongly disagree with the decision to have the president speak. This is similar to the problems Biden is having in many communities of color and with young voters across the country.
In an interview, David Thomas, the president of Morehouse, said that the stress of the speech made it even more important for Biden to give it. He said, “These are the times Morehouse was born for in many ways.”
“This country needs a place that can hold the tensions that could split us apart.” No place else can handle those tensions if Morehouse can’t.
The speech comes at a very important time for Biden in his rematch with Republican Trump in the general election. Biden isn’t getting enough support from Black voters and people under 30. These are two groups that helped him win close races in several key 2020 states, including Georgia.
NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in March found that 55% of Black adults were satisfied with how Biden was doing as president. This is a much lower percentage than when he first took office.
Anwar Karim, a sophomore at Morehouse, said, “This is a global disaster in Gaza, and Joe Biden coming to pander for our votes is political blackface.” He asked Thomas and the school’s trustees to take back Biden’s invitation.
Recent events on college campuses in the US show that many young voters are against Israel’s attacks in Gaza. Biden has stood with Israel since Oct. 7, when Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took hundreds hostage. In spite of Biden’s calls for a cease-fire and criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tactics, weapons are being sent to the longtime U.S. ally. More than 35,000 people have died in Gaza, and many of them are women and children.
A lot of young Black people support the Palestinian cause and have sometimes said that Israeli rule over the Palestinian territories is like South Africa’s past apartheid system and the end of Jim Crow laws in the U.S. Israel doesn’t agree with the idea that the laws it has for Palestinians are apartheid.
“I think the president will be better off if he doesn’t avoid that, especially when you think about the people he will be talking to as well as the whole country,” Thomas said.
Biden will focus on reaching out to Black communities for four days, ending with his speech on Sunday. Thursday, Biden met privately with the plaintiffs in the Brown v. Board of Education case, which stopped public schools in the United States from being legally segregated. Biden will speak at an NAACP event the next day to mark the 70th anniversary of the important decision.
Former U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, a longtime supporter of Biden who helped set up his speech at Morehouse, said he understood the students’ concerns but stressed that Biden has put pressure on Netanyahu and backs a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians.
In the meantime, Trump has pretty much given up on that long-held U.S. position and said that Israel should “finish the problem” in Gaza. Richmond said, “That wasn’t even brought up.”
The argument over Biden’s speech at Morehouse showed a basic conflict that exists in historically Black colleges and universities: they work for social justice and Black advancement, but they are also run by people who want to keep things in order.
Thomas said, “Sometimes we look like a very conservative institution.” “On the one hand, the institution has to be the stable thing in the world right now.”
He did say, though, that the university’s long-term goal is to “support our students in going out to make the world a better place.”
Backlash began even before Thomas made it official that Biden would be coming. Concerns were raised by faculty in a letter to executives, which led to an online town hall. A group of several hundred alumni signed a petition asking Thomas to cancel Biden’s invitation. The petition said the invitation went against the pacifism that Martin Luther King Jr., who went to Morehouse and spoke out against the Vietnam War, stood for.
Some students point out that Morehouse and other HBCU leaders did not always back King and other revered civil rights activists. In 1969, Samuel L. Jackson was kicked out of Morehouse after he and other students locked up trustees, including King’s father, in a campus building to demand changes to the curriculum and the appointment of more Black trustees.
Students recently planned two protests across the Atlanta University Center, or AUC. Morehouse is part of the AUC, which is a group of historically Black colleges and universities in Atlanta. “Joe Biden, f— off!” and “Biden, Biden, you can’t hide!” were some of the chants. “We charge you with genocide,” along with some bad words for Thomas.
A student at Spelman College, which is part of the AUC, called it “genocide that our school supports and we turn a blind eye to.” Brodie said that Biden’s policy toward Israel should be looked at in the bigger picture of U.S. foreign policy and police violence against Black Americans in the United States.
Thomas said he “feels very positive about graduation” and that “not one” of the 500 seniors at the all-male private school Morehouse has chosen not to go. “That doesn’t mean that people in our community don’t feel the same way about what’s going on in Gaza,” Thomas said.
Thomas and a few other trustees met with students alone. At least one veteran of the Atlanta Student Movement, an organization from the Civil Rights era, spoke at a town hall meeting put on by the Morehouse Alumni Association.
But there was one message that kept coming up: the president of the United States could not be turned away. When students asked about endowment investments in Israel and U.S. defense contractors, they were told that the amounts were very small—a few hundred thousand dollars in mutual funds.
Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who is also the senior pastor at King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, said, “I think people are excited” that Biden is coming. Warnock said Biden is in a “great position” to talk about lowering student loans, giving more money to historically black colleges and universities, and other accomplishments.
Police have not cracked down on HBCUs like they have at Columbia University in New York City and the University of California, Los Angeles. But there have been peaceful protests, petitions, and private meetings between campus stakeholders at Morehouse and the AUC. Xavier University in Louisiana, which has a history of being a Black university, took back its invitation for U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield to speak at their commencement because students wanted “to enjoy a commencement ceremony free of disruptions.”
Whether Morehouse graduates or other students protest Biden or disrupt the ceremony remains to be seen. Student protest leaders say they are unaware of any plans to demonstrate inside during the commencement.
Thomas, Morehouse’s president, promised that forms of protest at commencement that “do not disrupt ceremonies” will not result in sanctions for any students.
But he also vowed to end the program early if disruptions grow.
“We will not — on Morehouse’s campus — create a national media moment,” he said, “where our inability to manage these tensions leads to people being taken out of a Morehouse ceremony in zip ties by law enforcement.”
