At the Massachusetts Institution of Technology (MIT) graduation ceremony on Thursday, Megha M. Vemuri, president of the Class of 2025, launched her controversial speech by praising her classmates for protesting Israel in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023. She told her classmates: “you showed the world that MIT wants a free Palestine.”
Vemuri’s contentious remarks led to her being barred from attending Friday’s undergraduate ceremony, an MIT spokesperson told Fox News Digital, noting that the speech she delivered was not the version submitted in advance to university officials.
Former Fox News star Megyn Kelly responded on X by writing: “So this woman hijacks the MIT graduation to make the whole thing about her personal beliefs about Israel, any insult to the Jewish students or others in attendance be damned. Selfish, self-aggrandizing, disrespectful & RUDE.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who earned his B.A. and J.D. from Louisiana State University, responded on X by writing: “Ignorant. Hateful. Morally bankrupt. Where is the shame—or appropriate response from the institution? Have your children avoid MIT & the Ivy League at all costs.”
Ignorant. Hateful. Morally bankrupt. Where is the shame—or appropriate response from the institution?
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) May 31, 2025
Have your children avoid MIT & the Ivy League at all costs. https://t.co/xrTzL8absB
Note: MIT’s response included distancing itself from Vemuri and stating that her remarks did not represent the school, issuing clarification that the speech she delivered was different from the one she submitted in advance. Hence, Kelly’s description of the event as a “hijack.”
The prestigious academic institute, acknowledged as one of the world’s finest, addressed banning Vemuri in a statement reading: “MIT supports free expression but stands by its decision, which was in response to the individual deliberately and repeatedly misleading Commencement organizers and leading a protest from the stage, disrupting an important Institute ceremony.”
Some MAGA supporters, unsatisfied, voiced their disapproval of Johnson after his response to MIT.
As social media influencer “Gunther Eagleman” replied to the Speaker of the House: “Maybe someone in a position of power could show up to work and do something about it? Or take another vacation and do nothing.”
Eagleman has been complaining about Johnson not being able to codify Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts in President Trump’s “big beautiful bill.”
Others are echoing Trump’s idea of using the $3 billion the federal government planned to send to Harvard for research grants and investing the money instead into trade schools.
Note: According to data at CollegeFactual, the majority of the American undergraduate students at MIT come from California (18.8%), followed by New York, Massachusetts and Texas, with each state representing between 10% and 8% of the undergrad student body. The same data show Louisiana accounting for 0.41% of the undergraduates matriculating at MIT.
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