Why did the University of Michigan LSA remove its video of the Political Science Graduation Ceremony?

The University of Michigan Political Science Department wants to sweep its 2025 Commencement Ceremony under the rug and pretend it never happened.

If you click on the link to find out the details of the ceremony: the date, time, and place, you will run up against the dreaded “Page Not Found” message.

This is the one graduation ceremony that honored and glorified student and faculty supporters of Palestine, Hamas, the Boycott Sanctions and Divest movement as well as the Intifada Revolution you will not find on short reels floating around on Instagram, YouTube or Tiktok.

That’s because the University of Michigan removed the entire video of its PoliSci graduation from public view.

But I got to watch it and report on it here for you.

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On May 5, around 38 minutes into the graduation ceremony, the University of Michigan School of LSA bestowed Alifa Chowdry with the Award for Outstanding Service in Community Engagement. Known as the “Tommies” they are given annually to students who have made “substantial contributions to the communities around them during their undergraduate careers.”

In her academic pursuits, Chowdry, who is headed to Cambridge to earn a master’s degree, received honors for her research work in anticolonial studies including studying writing and defending her thesis on “genealogy of Indian legal theory … examining the tensions between reform and abolition, tradition and modernity, and colonial critique and anti-colonial revivalism in the discourse on caste.”

Her advisor, Dr. Murad Idris, is known for his work in promoting and holding lectures on anti-Palestinian racism. Idris was one of over 1,000 University of Michigan Faculty who on October 11 signed an open letter criticizing then-President Santa Ono’s swift condemnation of the October 7th massacre and his allyship with his many academic and research colleagues in Israel. The letter did not mention Hamas, the hostages, and in its first paragraph, described the October 7th massacre as the “result of the decades-long Israeli occupation of Palestine and the structural apartheid

Palestinians residing both within Israel and the Occupied Territories endure on a daily

basis.”

Dr. Idris actively participated in faculty efforts to call for a boycott against Israel. For example, he participated in an April 2024 demonstration on the campus Diag in support of the pro-Hamas encampment and in support of divesting the University’s financial holdings and research relationship with Israel. Dr. Idris spoke at the demonstration as well as Professor Khaled Mattawa, and Dr. Charles Davis.

When Chowdry took to the stage, a faculty member read her prepared bio.