The Commencement Speech Israel Doesn't Want You To Hear

About this episode

The episode discusses the cancellation of Rami Elghandour's commencement speech at Rutgers and features insights from journalists reporting in the Middle East.

Thanks for supporting our work! Watch our full, unpaywalled episode here: Subscribers get our weekly recaps, the Friday Free-for-All: It’s another classic Useful Idiots double header! First up we’re speaking with Rami Elghandour, biotech CEO whose company is developing transformative immunotherapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases. He’s also executive producer of the Oscar-nominated film The Voice of Hind Rajab and The American Doctor. (note to other CEOs: it’s possible to do good things with your money) Rami was scheduled to give the convocation speech at Rutgers this week but was abruptly canceled, being told by a dean that “we’ve had a few students who feel that your social media posts are opposed to their beliefs.” Here is the tweet that got Rami canceled: “Forget a free ride. They’ve committed genocide. They’re running dungeons where they train dogs to sexually assault prisoners... Weapons embargo is the absolute minimum. Sanctions and diplomatic isolation are beyond justified. This we’ll sell them weapons won’t fly…” Rami reveals his full conversation with the dean and shows us a clip of the speech he would have given , which is now available on YouTube . We also speak…

People in this episode

Hosts: Katie Halper, Aaron Maté

Guests: Rami Elghandour, Wyatt Reed

Topics covered

• Israel
• censorship
• journalism
• cancer immunotherapy
• political speech
• Middle East

Keywords

• Israel
• censorship
• Rami Elghandour
• Wyatt Reed
• Rutgers
• journalism
• Middle East
• cancer immunotherapy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Rutgers, Grayzone

Books & works: The Voice of Hind Rajab

Places: Iran, Lebanon

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