Pro-Palestinian University of Chicago graduates receive diplomas withheld due to protests

Five University of Chicago graduates received their diplomas this week after the university withheld them for more than two months over 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 their name — received conferment letters in recent weeks notifying that their disciplinary cases had been dismissed and their diplomas would be mailed to them.

Relieved that the disciplinary process is done, Hasweh still questions why the five of them were punished in the first place. They never were informed of what their alleged misconduct was, other than receiving a complaint that didn’t include their names but referred to involvement 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 at an October sit-in at the school where they demanded the university disclose its investments and divest from those with ties to Israel and arms companies.

His misdemeanor trespass to property charge was eventually dropped. But the university continued its disciplinary action, which could include withholding degrees until the case is resolved.

The arrest caused Hasweh to be fired from his job in the admissions office. He also had several job offers rescinded after graduation while the university withheld his degree, he said.

“Going through this, it was so unfair,” Hasweh told the Sun-Times. “Like I was meant to start my life and I was meant to get a job and be an alum officially, and they just kind of halted my life essentially and my career trajectory to unjustly name us when none of our names were even in these complaints.”

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

The creation of the ad hoc chair, which was appointed by provost Katherine Baicker without the consultation of sitting chairs or the faculty senate after the complaints were made, was a “clear interference,” according to Denis Hirschfeldt, a mathematics professor who in 2017 was on the faculty senate that drafted the rules for the disciplinary process.

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

The students who had their degrees withheld were still allowed to attend the June 1 graduation ceremony, where they had planned to walk while displaying their empty diploma cases.

Several students, families and faculty walked out of the graduation ceremony in protest of the war. Some, including Hasweh, were met by parents and other attendees yelling obscenities, he said. Other protesters were pepper-sprayed by university and Chicago police officers.

“The scene was insane, like pepper-spraying students in caps and gowns, decorated with stoles and pins and cords, and they’re being pepper-sprayed at their graduation for saying that this isn’t right,” Hasweh said.

Although the university disciplinary process is settled and he has officially received his degree in political science, still, “part of me will never move on from this last year,” said Hasweh, who has family in the West Bank.

“The job is not done. I will be back, but now I’ll just be working a different lens,” he said. “Now I’m officially an alum, so the university will never get rid of me and that won’t stop until they de-invest from all Israeli entities and that’s when I move on, that’s what I consider my degree.”