JTA — George Washington University said recently that it will ban a student commencement speaker from campus after she used her graduation speech to decry “genocide” in Gaza and urged her graduating class not to donate to the school until it agrees to divest from Israel.

Pro-Israel students and alumni had urged the school to discipline the speaker and a dean who thanked her for “sharing your words and your views.” The dean’s profile no longer appears on GWU’s website.

It is at least the second prestigious university this season to take disciplinary action against a student commencement speaker for remarks related to Israel. New York University said it would withhold the diploma of a speaker there who denounced “genocide” and “atrocities currently happening in Palestine” in his speech last week.

GWU apologized and announced an investigation after Cecilia Culver made the comments while addressing the school’s liberal arts college on Saturday.

The next day, the school announced the penalty, saying Culver’s conduct “was inappropriate and dishonest” because she had delivered a different speech from the one she had submitted.

The statement added that Culver “has been barred from all GW’s campuses and sponsored events elsewhere,” and that it was continuing to conduct “a thorough review” with potential additional “accountability actions” to follow.

Culver had to take frequent breaks for sustained applause she received during her speech, delivered at GWU’s largest graduation ceremony.

“For over a year, we have watched a genocide be committed against Palestinians,” she said, adding, “I cannot celebrate my own graduation without a heavy heart, knowing how many students in Palestine have been forced to stop their studies, expelled from their homes, and killed for simply remaining in the country of their ancestors.”

She continued, “I am ashamed that my own........

© The Times of Israel