AMY GOODMAN: “The destruction of Palestine is breaking the world.” That’s the headline of a new piece in The Guardian by the scholar Mustafa Bayoumi. It opens with a description of our first guest today: quote, “Sereen Haddad is a bright young woman. At 20 years old, she just finished a four-year degree in psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in only three years, earning the highest honors along the way. Yet, despite her accomplishments, she still can’t graduate. Her diploma is being withheld by the university, 'not because I didn't complete the requirements’, she told me,” Bayoumi writes, “'but because I stood up for Palestinian life',” unquote.

In May, VCU announced Sereen would not receive her diploma because of her participation in a peaceful memorial this past April that commemorated the violent police arrests at their student encampment for Palestine the previous April, in 2024. Police told the roughly 50 students they were trespassing and breaking campus policy when they refused to move to a designated area for free speech.

Sereen was an active member of the VCU chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. She’s a Palestinian American who’s lost more than 200 members of her extended family in Israel’s war on Gaza. The group’s actions have been repeatedly targeted and repressed by the VCU administration, including banning the use of sidewalk chalk to write messages on campus. The Muslim Public Affairs Council and others have called on VCU to immediately release the degrees of Sereen and another student.

Sereen’s father is Palestinian American Dr. Tariq Haddad, a cardiologist and a member of the Virginia Coalition for Human Rights. He grew up in Gaza. Last year, he refused to meet with then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the Biden administration’s support of Israel’s assault on Gaza. We spoke to him about that on Democracy Now! in February.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, yesterday, Sereen had a hearing before the VCU Student Conduct Board to determine whether she’ll receive her diploma.

She and her father join us now from Falls Church, Virginia. Dr. Tariq Haddad is a cardiologist and a member of the Virginia Coalition for Human Rights. And Sereen Haddad just came from her hearing at Virginia Commonwealth University.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! First, the last time we spoke with you, Dr. Tariq Haddad, you had lost more than a hundred members of your family. That was just months ago, a half a year ago. That number has now doubled to over 200. Our condolences to both of you.

DR. TARIQ HADDAD: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Also — 

DR. TARIQ HADDAD: Thank you. It’s —

AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead.

DR. TARIQ HADDAD: It’s been a nightmare. Sorry. I apologize. Go ahead.

AMY GOODMAN: And also, our condolences on the death of your dad in the United States just a few weeks ago, and your grandfather, Sereen.

DR. TARIQ HADDAD: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: So —

SEREEN HADDAD: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve both been through an enormous amount. Sereen, as you were having your hearing yesterday at Virginia Commonwealth — you’re the star student in psychology, supposed to be graduating in three years — all the figures were coming out of Gaza, the numbers of a thousand killed by Israeli forces since May, a thousand Palestinians, and something like a hundred Palestinians starving to death. And I’m wondering your thoughts, first, on what happened yesterday, and what you told the board who’s investigating you.

SEREEN HADDAD: Yeah. I think that, in general, a lot of the VCU policies were created and fabricated in response to the Palestinian protests. I think that they’re — the policies that are made, they’re not about policy. It’s not about procedure. It’s about repression. And it’s very clear specifically when, in response to the SJP’s — every single Wednesday, we would use sidewalk chalk to chalk messages like “Free Palestine” or ”VCU is complicit in genocide.” VCU then responded, months later, by banning the use of sidewalk chalk in many areas across the campus. And one of the only areas they allow sidewalk chalk is actually this small area that’s hidden and near three different dumpsters.

So, I think that the way the hearing went yesterday, we’re going to find out, of course, find out what decision the VCU makes and what the Student Conduct Board ends up making. I advocated, and I pled my case. Thankfully, I had representation from Palestine Legal and had a great support system. There was an action letter that went out that had over 5,400 signatures on it. And I think, at the end of the day, whatever VCU decides, I have made peace with the fact that I don’t need a university who is materially invested in a genocide’s approval about whether I deserve my degree or not. And I think that I can understand that I am on the right side of history, and I don’t need a university to tell me that.

AMY GOODMAN: But you did go to school and paid for that schooling for three years. Dr. Haddad, how did you feel when you heard your daughter, who had worked so hard through her college career, was not going to get her diploma? And did this mean you didn’t get to walk this year?

SEREEN HADDAD: So, I did get to walk across the stage. I just didn’t get a diploma, although everyone else did. And I walked on May 10th, and I received the notice that I wasn’t going to be getting my diploma and degree on May 7th, so just three days prior to my graduation.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Haddad, how did you feel?

DR. TARIQ HADDAD: Yeah, so, I think mixed emotions. You know, what I would say is, obviously, no parent wants to see their child having their degree inappropriately withheld. But I was also very proud, you know. And what I mean by that is I’ve always, always — you know, every parent wants their children to care about something more than themselves, to advocate for something more than themselves, to believe in the goodness of people and to try to — to always try to do what you can to make the world around them better. And there’s no better example of that than advocating for the rights of oppressed Palestinians for the past 75 years. Since they were children, we’ve always — we’ve always advocated for that: You care about something more than yourself, help make the world a better place, and just have an impact on people. And she’s shown that, and she’s made us incredibly proud, you know, the fact that she has integrity, that she’s not just being silent and doing what’s necessarily best for her, but doing what’s best for all of her family in Gaza, who are starving, who are dying, who are malnourished. And it just shows the utter humanity that my daughter has.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Haddad, in fact, what are you hearing from your family back in Gaza? You grew up there. Talk about — I mean, 200 members of your extended family. Talk about some of their stories, that you have lost.

DR. TARIQ HADDAD: Yeah, I mean, you know, most people, they have photo albums of their living relatives. The sad reality is I have a photo album of all my dead relatives, and it doesn’t even fit a full photo album. As you said, it’s over 200 family members on both sides of my family. My mother’s family is mostly from Khan Younis, and my father’s is from Gaza City, and so they’ve had it on both ends.

You know, early on — you know, early on, I mean, some of the stories that come to mind, you know, one of my relatives died on her — was killed on her wedding day. On her wedding day. I’ve had, you know, entire generations of family — the grandparents, the parents, the children — all killed, 18 in one military strike. You know, I’ve had a relative who was killed, a cousin who was killed, while she was pregnant. That was early on.

But this has continued. It’s not stopped. Last summer, August 11th, one of my cousin’s children, Abdul El-Farra, was killed literally trying to get bread for his family. He was just walking down the street, trying to get bread for his starving family. And the last picture, you know, we saw as a family — sorry, it’s full emotional.

SEREEN HADDAD: He was 14 years old.

DR. TARIQ HADDAD: Fourteen years old, and he was top of his class. Last picture is of him strewn on the side of the road, killed by an Israeli military strike, with five bags of bread in his hand, which, you know, you can’t even get now. But that’s what he was doing. He was getting bread. That was his crime, to get bread for his starving family.

You know, I’ve had — I mean, the stories go on and on. I had a relative, Mohamed El-Farra, who’s a special needs adult. You know, military footage, that was actually provided by — on an Israeli media station, Channel 12, showed the Israeli military striking him while he was walking, basically, you know, on his own, near his home, near the rubble of his home. And he’s just killed, a special needs adult. I mean, it’s gone on and on. Every day we hear new stories.

And what’s worse than the deaths, Amy, is all the suffering. It’s unbelievable. It’s a dystopian nightmare. I mean, I just heard from one of my relatives, Nael, yesterday, who said he’s never seen anything like this. You see people on the street who fall onto the ground, not just from bullets, but from starvation. They get to the point of starvation to the point where they literally fall on the ground. It’s — I’m just going to, you know, read you a quote that Nael just sent me, my cousin, yesterday, because it just tells you everything. He just sent this to me on WhatsApp yesterday. He said, “What’s happening in Gaza right now is beyond description and beyond comprehension. It’s not just a passing tragedy, but an unprecedented humanitarian disaster in history. In Gaza, people are falling in the streets, not from bullets, but from the severity of the hunger, one after the other, like autumn leaves weighed down by despair. And if they don’t die from hunger, a missile awaits them while they get food, or relentless bombing. There’s no choice between life and death, because death alone is present. Gaza today bleeds in silence, and the world is content with merely watching.”

And then, another one of my cousins, Salim, just sent me a message, too. He said, “It’s a disgrace for all nations in the 21st century that someone should die from hunger, while countries cannot even intervene to provide the basic necessities of life for people who have always loved life.” So, that’s kind of an idea.

Other things I’ve heard from my family, my cousin Heba talked about her worst — you know, the worst stress that she has is having her son asking for food, and she has no food to give them. There’s no flour. There’s no vegetables. There’s no proteins. There’s no — there’s no anything to provide them. They go three days without eating. All of them are emaciated. Every one of my relatives and cousins, you know, are massively underweight.

You know, even trying to get food is an unbelievable tragedy. They have to make a decision about whether to walk on, you know, roads that are completely impassable and then go to these aid stations where they could be sniped and shot down while they’re getting food. And so, it’s a decision: Do you starve to death, or do you go to these aid stations and get sniped by Israeli soldiers?

It’s just — I can’t even — I can’t even describe the level of lack of humanity that my family is going through every day. And you’ve seen that, I’m sure, on the news, Amy. I mean, over a thousand people have been killed while trying to get food from these aid stations, and that’s just in the past few months.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Haddad, you refused to meet with Tony Blinken at a roundtable discussion and sent him a letter talking about why, chronicling what had happened to your family. I’m wondering your thoughts about Trump today.

DR. TARIQ HADDAD: I think, you know, the problem that I’ve seen is that it’s been more of the same. What we saw — just without even getting into politics, what we saw under Biden was President Biden was, you know, weapons and more weapons and bombs. And what we’ve seen under President Trump has been more of the same. It’s just a complete disconnection from the reality of what voters want and what, you know, Democratic voters want, what everybody wants. I mean, you see that in the polls.

Twelve-and-a-half billion dollars in weapons provided just in the past six months, you know, specifically for military equipment, that’s being used on my family, being used on these people who are starving to death. And, you know, we’re having trouble balancing our budget, and yet we have 12-and-a-half billion dollars to provide for bombs to kill innocent people? It’s just — it’s beyond comprehension. And we’re not even talking about small weapons. We’re talking about bunker-buster bombs that destroy city blocks the size of Times Square. And, you know, what purpose do we have as a country? How is it consistent with our moral compass to be providing bunker-buster bombs that destroy entire city blocks and kill, you know, at this point, over 18,000 children. I just — I don’t understand the lack of humanity and the lack of a moral compass to do what’s right as a country.

AMY GOODMAN: Sereen, you have gone through college — at least half of your college has been against the backdrop of what your dad just described, losing 200 members of your family. And you were majoring in psychology. How did that affect all that you did at Virginia Commonwealth University? And how did the university respond? Did they express support for you through the years?

SEREEN HADDAD: Yeah, I think that, like I said, we’ve just consistently seen repression across the board. And this isn’t just something unique to my university. We’ve seen it globally in universities. I think that something people need to come to terms with is that universities, although they claim to be, they are not neutral spaces. They’re complicit in genocide. They’re materially invested in weapon manufacturers and war profiteers, especially Virginia Commonwealth University.

And, you know, again, not a unique story, but we — April 2024, many people at Virginia Commonwealth University set up an encampment with the aim to pressure the university to divest from death and divest from Israel. And instead of being supportive and instead of hearing the students out and instead of understanding that students were there because they did not want their tuition dollars, our tuition dollars, going to killing our people and my family, instead, what they did is send three different police forces that night to come and brutalize us. And people got pepper-sprayed, tear-gassed. I got sent to the ER that night, as well.

And, you know, we’ve seen repression in that sense. We’ve seen repression with policies, again, that they paint all of this up to seem like policies, to seem like procedure. It’s not. It’s power. It’s control. It’s about trying to maintain the esthetic of the university, like the administration always tends to call it, but in reality, what it is is that they try to repress anyone who dares to go against the status quo, because the people that are going against the status quo, the people that, like me, like my fellow peers, that were speaking up, were exposing the truth that the university is, in fact, not this, you know, angel of a university it paints itself out to be, but rather it is complicit.

Virginia Commonwealth University, I would like to say, the most ironic part of it all is the reason that I originally actually chose to come to this university is because their PR campaign, “Virginia Commonwealth University is diversity.” And it’s about being uncommon and unequaled in excellence. And they preach diversity, and they preach wanting to protect it. And then, when it actually comes to protecting the students that make the campus diverse, they fall short every single time. I, as a Palestinian student, have never felt welcomed or safe at Virginia Commonwealth University at all. It’s clearly just a PR tool. It’s just a buzzword for them to continue to get more tuition dollars to send over to Israel to kill children in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about Virginia Commonwealth University’s response. We got in touch with them and asked them to comment on your case, Sereen. VCU declined to talk directly about your situation, saying they have an obligation to protect student privacy under federal and state laws. But they did issue a general statement that read, quote, “On April 29 a group of about 40 people held an unauthorized event on the lawn outside of Cabell Library. Despite multiple warnings over a three-hour period from Student Affairs, security personnel and VCU Police that VCU policy did not authorize events on the lawn — but would have permitted the event to relocate to the Park Plaza Amphitheater — many of those assembled refused to relocate to the … Amphitheater, only a few hundred feet away. … When seniors and graduate students are involved in a possible or alleged conduct violation, they receive a letter giving them advance notice of the potential ramifications if they are found responsible.” Your final response, as we wrap up? I know that your dad has to continue with his practice and see his patients this morning.

SEREEN HADDAD: Yeah, I would like to say 100% that, actually, throughout my hearing yesterday, one of the biggest points that I argued was the fact that a lot of the policies that they are saying that I allegedly violated has to start with an event must have a university sponsor, an event must this, this, that. Something I’d like to state is there’s actually no clear definition in the VCU policy. As much as they preach VCU policy, there is no clear definition about what an actual event is. There’s a definition about what a major event is, and that constitutes 150 people. And like you stated earlier, Ms. Amy, there was no more than 40 or 50 people on that lawn. Not only that, but it actually never clearly states in the policy that the lawn specifically cannot be used for events or gatherings.

What we had on that day was a gathering, was to commemorate the encampment, because VCU tried so hard to shove underneath the rug what happened in their response to a protest protesting the genocide in Gaza. And we were there to mourn the lives lost, as well. Again, instead of supporting us, instead, VCU continued to repress us. Administration came to us and told us that we could relocate to what they call the free speech zone on campus, which the fact that that is even something at that university, in this country, that claims to stand on the value of free speech and uphold the First Amendment, is absolutely ridiculous. And there actually is a code. I believe it’s 20.3-401.1, that actually states that there should — every single university should uphold the constitutional right of free speech on campus, and no university shall abridge that constitutional right. And VCU has that on their website and yet continues to do the same exact thing.

So, I would just like to say that actually the comment that they gave you has many holes in it and many lies in it. There’s no clear definition of what an event is. And the fact of the matter is, is that the gathering that was held, when administration came up to us, it was actually ended. On a literal sense, it was ended, and it was announced that it was ended. And so there was no gathering to actually move to the free speech zone. And like I said, the policies are vague. They say that you can’t have expressive activities in different areas of campus, but most things are expressive activities, as we’ve brought up before. If someone were to wear a T-shirt with a political figure that someone didn’t like, does that mean that they are then breaking VCU policy? There’s so many holes in this VCU policy, so many gray areas, and I do believe VCU does that on purpose. That way, they can continue to oppress students and hide underneath this guise of policy and procedure. But again, like I have said multiple times before, it is about power. It is about upholding a, you know, esthetic, according to the university. They have continued to say that over and over again.

What we did there that day was — did not break policy. And if anything, what we did that day, I think, upheld more morals or ethics than VCU could ever uphold at all. One of the sanctions that VCU gave me for that day, saying that I broke policy, was that in order to get my degree, they were requiring me to take a class on morals and ethics, which I think is quite ironic, coming from a university that lacks morals and ethics, lacks the most morals and ethics that I’ve seen in my entire life. And so, like I said, I do not need the validation from a university that is materially invested in the killing of children, in the killing of thousands of people, to get my degree. I don’t need the validation from them to tell me that I need to take a class on morals and ethics, when, in reality, I understand that I’m on the right side of history.

There are 2.3 million Palestinians starving — not even just starving, but being starved right now in Palestine, in Gaza. And there are 650,000 children that are at risk of dying of starvation right now. And like we’ve stated before, a thousand have been killed trying to get aid just since May. So, there are continuous atrocities across the world. So, if we are going to speak out about that and we are going to refuse to be complicit, then there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. And if there’s any university that gets in the way of that, I believe that they are on the wrong side of history. And the history books will continue to show that, and the history books will show where we stand, and that is on the right side of history with all oppressed people. None of us are free ’til all of us are free. And we will not free Palestine; Palestine will free us.

DR. TARIQ HADDAD: Amy, one thing I’d add, if you don’t mind, just a little — a history lesson about how long this has been going on. So, just listening to Sereen talk right now reminded me of my grandmother, her great-grandmother. So, her great-grandmother, Laila El-Farra, was actually the headmaster of the United Nations schools in Gaza in the '50s, late ’50s and ’60s. And there's a beautiful story from our family that just reminds us how long the suppression of, you know, Palestinian free speech has been going on.

Sereen just got beaten by police for advocating for equal rights and for humanity for Palestinians. My grandmother, in the ’60s, was trying to teach. She was teaching refugee children who had been forced out of their homes in Yaffa and Haifa and in northern what is Israel now, forced out by Israeli militias. And the children wanted to know more about the homelands, about where they came from. And so, she would teach them about their lands, about their cities, about where their families were from. And she was beaten by Israeli soldiers and told, if she did not stop teaching them about the areas in Israel, that she would — that they would beat her more. They would close her school. And this is back in the ’50s and ’60s.

And look at where we are now: same suppression of free speech, you know, three generations later, right? My grandmother, now my daughter. Just it’s been going on for over 75 years and has continued. But, you know, human rights and morality are on our side. And I think people’s moral compass is going to prevail eventually, I think.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us. Again, our condolences on the loss of so many members of your own family, more than 200 of your extended family, not to mention, overall, what is happening in Gaza, your extended community. Sereen Haddad, Palestinian American VCU graduate, please let us know if you get your degree. I guess they’re deciding in the next few days, is that right?

SEREEN HADDAD: Yes, they should be.

AMY GOODMAN: And Dr. Tariq Haddad, cardiologist, member of the Virginia Coalition for Human Rights, who grew up in Gaza.

When we come back, “Starvation is knocking on every door.” Those are the words of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. We’ll speak with the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Say Goodbye” by Michael Franti in our Democracy Now! studio.