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President Joe Biden on Sunday delivers his first commencement address of the 2024 season at Morehouse College, where he may have to confront for the first time in months the angst that’s been percolating on college campuses nationwide toward his administration’s policies on the Israel-Hamas war.
The commencement at Morehouse, a historically Black, all-male college in Atlanta that counts the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. among its alumni, could be the most direct exposure Biden has yet received to young peoples’ frustrations over his policies related to the war in Gaza.
The announcement last month that Biden will be delivering the Morehouse commencement sparked outrage from a portion of the school’s faculty, prompting the school’s provost to convene an open forum in late April to address those concerns. But even amid the controversy, the school has been steadfast that it will not rescind Biden’s invitation, which was first extended in September – before the war began.
Due to that backlash, and in anticipation of protests, the White House last week sent Stephen Benjamin, the director of its office of public engagement, to Morehouse to speak with some of the students.
During a Thursday news briefing at the White House, Benjamin said he and the students had a wide-ranging conversation, including on the conflict in the Middle East.
“I think what’s gonna be most important are the words that the president articulates,” Benjamin said at the White House. “And I know that he, he feels very deeply about what this means to these young men.”
“I’m sure the president will have a chance to engage with faculty, staff and students while he’s there,” he added, “and I know that he looks forward to it.”
Over the last several months, Biden has largely shied away from addressing large crowds of young people on college campuses, a change that came shortly after his January remarks on abortion rights at Virginia’s George Mason University were interrupted more than a dozen times by protesters outraged at his continued support for Israel in its war in Gaza.
Since then, and as the death toll in Gaza of civilians, aid workers and journalists has continued to rise, that anger has only spread.
More than 1,360 student demonstrations have taken place on campuses across the country from October 7 to May 3, according to data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. The overwhelming majority of those demonstrations – 97% – have been peaceful, though isolated cases of property destruction and violence have gained widespread attention.
Those instances reached a crescendo in late April and early May, when students at Columbia University overtook some university buildings, an encampment at the University of Texas in Austin was forcefully dispersed by police, and counter-protesters at UCLA launched an hours-ong attack on a pro-Palestinian encampment.
Those cases of campus turmoil prompted Biden, in brief remarks from the White House earlier this month, to denounce some of the actions of campus protesters.
“I understand people have strong feelings of deep convictions,” Biden said at the time. “In America, we respect the right and protect the right for them to express that. But it doesn’t mean anything goes.”
While dissent is “essential to democracy,” Biden said in those remarks, it “must never lead to disorder, or to denying the rights of others.”
Biden’s Morehouse commencement will be the latest in a series of efforts undertaken by the president this week to both acknowledge the nation’s historic racial shortcomings, while simultaneously addressing its next generation of Black leaders.
The president on Thursday met with the plaintiffs of the historic Brown v. Board of Education case that overturned racial segregation in schools 70 years ago. During that meeting, some of the plaintiffs’ relatives urged him to make the case’s anniversary a national holiday.
On Friday, Biden delivered remarks at the National Museum of African American History and Culture and spoke with members of the Divine Nine, a group of historic Black fraternities and sororities.
And after his Morehouse speech on Sunday, Biden is set to travel to Detroit, where he will address an NAACP dinner.
Biden’s stop at Morehouse is the second time he will visit the college during his presidency. In 2022, both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a speech on voting rights at Morehouse.
