Students at Rutgers University School of Engineering threatened to skip their graduation ceremony over the planned speaker’s history of anti-Israel messages.
According to The Associated Press, the university responded by removing Rami Elghandour, CEO of biotech company Arcellx and a university alumnus, from the ceremony.
That invitation was rescinded last week by the school’s dean, Alberto Cuitiño, after the university learned that “some graduating students would not attend their graduation ceremony due to concerns about the invited speaker’s social media posts,” a Rutgers spokesperson said in a statement.
The spokesperson declined to specify the offending posts, but confirmed they were focused on Israel.
Elghandour frequently shares news articles and footage of violence in Gaza and the West Bank, along with his own commentary accusing Israel of committing war crimes and upholding a system of apartheid.
A university representative specifically cited to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that an April 20 tweet by Elghandour accuses Israel of genocide and says the Israelis are “running dungeons where they train dogs to sexually assault prisoners.”
The tweet was a response to a post from California Democratic Representative Ro Khanna advocating for cutting US aid to Israel, which was itself a response to a post by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby that has become a bogeyman in US politics. The unsubstantiated claim that Israel trains dogs to assault prisoners has circulated widely in recent weeks among some pro-Palestinian activists.
“The Rutgers School of Engineering was recently informed that some graduating students would not attend their graduation ceremony due to concerns about the invited speaker’s social media posts, including one that shared an inflammatory claim,” Dory Devlin, a representative for Rutgers University, told JTA in an email. “After discussing these concerns with the speaker, the School of Engineering has rescinded the convocation speaker invitation to Rami Elghandour.”
Elghandour shared his ‘disappointment’ in a statement posted to X.
I love Rutgers and it’s disappointing and heartbreaking to see it abandon its students and its ideals. My full statement. pic.twitter.com/k1cEXlkY2j
— Rami Elghandour (@RamiElghandour) May 6, 2026
Following the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, Rutgers’ campus became a hotbed of anti-Israel protests.
In April, 2024, during a town hall event discussing BDS (boycott, divest, and sanction) referendums, the event was disrupted by a group of “out of control” pro-Palestinian protesters shrieking anti-Israel slogans like “one solution, intifada revolution.”
Jewish students, who had come to the town hall to discuss their safety on campus with officials, were abandoned by Holloway in a room full of radicals calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state.
In another incident, Rutgers University students from ‘Students for Justice in Palestine’ issued a set of demands to the school over its stance on the continuing conflict between Israel and Hamas, while masked by Keffiyehs emulating Middle Eastern terrorists.
During a May demonstration, pro-Hamas agitators chanted the genocidal slogan,‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!’
Ultimately, Rutgers University then-President Jonathan Holloway announced his departure following the 2024–2025 school year.
In January 2025, Rutgers reached a resolution agreement with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to settle multiple complaints alleging antisemitic harassment and a hostile environment for Jewish students after October 7, 2023. Rutgers agreed to implement training, policy changes, climate surveys, and better handling of discrimination complaints without admitting wrongdoing.
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