Pro-Palestinian University of Chicago Graduates Receive Degrees Withheld Due to Protests

Five University of Chicago graduates received their degrees this week after the university withheld them for more than two months because of the students’ alleged involvement in pro-Palestinian encampments.

Youssef Hasweh and the four others — Rayna Acha, Kelly Hui, Andrew Basta and a graduate student who declined to give his name — received letters of remission in recent weeks, informing them that their disciplinary cases had been closed and that their degrees would be mailed to them.

Relieved that the disciplinary process is over, Hasweh still wonders why the five students were punished. They were never informed of their alleged misconduct, other than a complaint that did not mention their names but referred to their participation in a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus.

The University of Chicago did not respond to a request for comment.

Hasweh, 22, was among more than two dozen students and faculty who were arrested during an October sit-in at the school, where they demanded that the university disclose its investments and divest from those with ties to Israel and arms companies.

The misdemeanor charge of trespassing was eventually dropped. But the university maintained its disciplinary measures, which could include withholding degrees until the case is resolved.

Hasweh’s arrest led to his dismissal from the admissions office. Several of his job offers were also withdrawn after he graduated because the university failed to issue him his degree, he said.

“I experienced such injustice,” Hasweh told the Sun-Times. “It was like I was supposed to start my life, get a job and officially graduate, and they kind of ended my life and my career by unfairly naming us names when none of our names were even mentioned in these complaints.”

The five students were required to write personal statements to the school and attend their own disciplinary hearings with a university personnel committee, headed by an ad hoc chair, chemistry professor Bryan Dickinson.

The creation of the ad hoc chair, appointed by Provost Katherine Baicker without consulting the sitting presidents or the faculty senate after the complaints were filed, was “clear interference,” according to Denis Hirschfeldt, a mathematics professor who in 2017 was part of the faculty senate that drafted the rules for the disciplinary process.

The University of Chicago said in a statement that it was “common” for the committee to appoint multiple chairs based on “availability and involvement in other matters,” but it did not mention appointing an ad hoc chair. It added that the process was “followed consistently with past practices.”

Students whose diplomas were withheld were nevertheless allowed to attend the June 1 graduation ceremony, where they planned to march while displaying their empty diploma cases.

Several students, families and faculty members walked out of the graduation ceremony in protest of the war. Some, including Hasweh, were met by parents and other attendees who shouted obscenities, he said. Other protesters were tear-gassed by university and Chicago police.

“The scene was crazy, like students wearing caps and gowns, decorated with stoles, pins and lanyards, were being tear-gassed and they were being tear-gassed at their graduation because they said it was wrong,” Hasweh said.

Even though the university’s disciplinary process is resolved and he has officially received his degree in political science, “a part of me will never get over this last year,” said Hasweh, who has family in the West Bank.

“The work is not done. I will come back, but I will work from a different angle,” he said. “I am now officially an alumnus, so the university will never get rid of me and it will not stop until it withdraws its investments from all Israeli entities. That is when I will move on, that is what I consider my degree.”