By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

“Never let your schooling get in the way of your education,” is a quote attributed to Mark Twain or a contemporary of his, the writer Grant Allen. The point has been displayed across college campuses over the past almost two years, as students mounted protests in solidarity with Palestinians, met with often violent crackdowns by campus authorities, police and vigilantes.

One striking example of the suppression of dissent occurred at Virginia Commonwealth University, a public research university in Richmond, Virginia. On Monday, April 29, 2024, students gathered outside Cabell Library, protesting U.S. support for Israel’s attack on Gaza.

Sereen Haddad, a Palestinian American student, was one of the organizers. Her father, Dr. Tariq Haddad, is a Virginia cardiologist who grew up in Gaza. Two months earlier, he had been invited to a roundtable meeting with then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He explained his refusal to attend, breaking down as he spoke on the Democracy Now! news hour:

“Some context is necessary here to understand why I turned this invitation down. I have hundreds of family members in Gaza, both sides of my family, in the town of Khan Younis and Gaza City. I’ve had about a hundred family members at this point who have been killed, including physicians, pharmacists, lawyers, engineers, dozens and dozens of children, multiple small babies…My cousin Jamal El-Farra, his son, who is a physician, Dr. Tawfiq El-Farra, his wife who was pregnant, two of their beautiful daughters, Reem and Hala, Jamal’s brother Esam, wife Semad, and their daughters, Rusul, Tuqa and Nadian, multiple generations all killed…”

Dr. Haddad continued to recite the names of family members killed. Now, 18 months later, the number is over 200.

Sereen recalled the day of the VCU protest, speaking recently on Democracy Now!:

“Many people at Virginia Commonwealth University set up an encampment to pressure the university to divest from death and divest from Israel. Instead of being supportive, instead of hearing the students out and understanding that students were there because they did not want their tuition dollars, our tuition dollars, going to killing our people and my family, what they did is send three different police forces that night to come and brutalize us.”

Thirteen students were arrested. Sereen, bloodied and bruised, was not charged. If they were guilty of anything, it would have been for taking the university at its word. Proudly emblazoned on VCU’s website is the phrase, “Unafraid to challenge the status quo.” Indeed, VCU President Michael Rao, in his 2023 state of the university speech, said,

“At VCU, we have not been known to follow the status quo because we don’t. We’re here to transform students’ lives … to help them with the many others that they’re concerned about. I love this generation. They love other human beings.”

It was a strange way to show love for the students, with pepper spray, tear gas and police.

This April, Sereen and about 40 other students gathered on the anniversary of the protest. One observer likened the peaceful assembly to a picnic. Once again, it was broken up by police. Sereen was targeted as an organizer and, along with another student, was told that VCU would withhold their diplomas. She was a stellar student, completing her four-year psychology degree in three years.

“They were requiring me to take a class on morals and ethics,” Sereen said. “I don’t 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. … I understand that I’m on the right side of history.”

Sereen appealed the withholding of her diploma, and this week, 82 days later, she won. She responded on Democracy Now!:

“This was not VCU choosing to do the right thing or waking up and realizing that they made an error. This was the result of pressure on a case that they could not defend. It was the result of truth prevailing, and they were left with no choice because the truth was always on our side. I cannot separate this small victory from the reality that at this very same moment millions of Palestinians are being starved in Gaza intentionally, systematically and with the support of the very systems that tried to silence me. The fact that I had to fight for my own diploma, something that I rightfully earned, is a testament to the exact same systems that are upholding and enabling genocide.”

Sereen Haddad has finally won her degree. More importantly, this talented young graduate, in challenging starvation and genocide in Gaza, has gotten an education.

Instead of being forced to take a class in ethics and morals, she could teach one.