Attorney Calls Action ‘Chilling’ Threat to Free Speech

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has banned a South Asian American grad student from campus and is threatening to boot him from the university for an article he published related to pro-Palestinian protesting, according to the student and his lawyer, who calls the punishment a threat to free speech.

MIT banned Prahlad Iyengar, a second-year electrical engineering doctoral student, earlier this month for an academic essay he penned in “Written Revolution,” a student publication of which he’s also a chief editor. The work, titled “On Pacifism,” is illustrated with and discusses historic examples of pacifism, including the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk in Vietnam, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and the pro-Palestinian protests. The article also includes reproduced imagery from the Popular Front for the Liberation for Palestine.

“This is a breath-takingly chilling attack on the First Amendment,” said an attorney for Iyengar, Eric Lee of Diamante Law Group. “This is aimed at chilling anti-genocide speech and pro-Palestinian speech.”

Iyengar faces possible expulsion because of the article, said Lee, and students caught distributing the article – which is available for free online – on campus could be punished.

“The implications of the effort to expel him based purely on the words that he wrote in the article and photos that accompany that article are massive,” Lee told the Sampan. “The most dangerous element is the administration has indicated in written communication that it believes (Iyengar) is providing support to terrorism by the words that he uses and the photos he uses in the article.”

Lee called the punishment a “blatant effort to censor the democratic views of the student population at MIT and beyond.”

Some parts of the largely academic-style essay discuss actions that could be interpreted as violent but are also presented in the abstract. At one point, for example, Iyengar declares that it’s time for the Pro-Palestinian movement “to begin wreaking havoc.” In another, he states, “We have a mandate to exact a cost from the institutions that have contributed to the growth and proliferation of colonialism, racism, and all oppressive systems.” But the essay’s context is the actual and widespread violence committed on a vastly larger scale over several generations – against blacks in the U.S. leading up to the Civil Rights Movement, against large segments of the Vietnamese population before and during the war, and by Israel, which is accused by many of committing genocide in Gaza. The essay’s language also appears far less violent than words spoken by Israeli officials and U.S. politicians in recent times. For example, U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton had called for taking “matters into your own hands” against pro-Palestinian protesters in the U.S. earlier this year. In Israel, violent language has included a prominent ruling party member who wrote on social media about the goal of “erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.”

“Exposing these contradictions is crucial to dialectic change which drives revolution,” writes Iyengar. “Black and Brown nonviolent protestors faced extreme suppression, imprisonment, and often lethal violence at the hands of the state … while pacifism requires nonviolence on the part of the activist, it does not impose any such restriction on their oppressor.”

MIT officials took aim at the “wreaking havoc” statement and a phrase on a reprinted photo that read, “we will burn the ground beneath your feet,” according to letters sent to Iyengar. It also objected to an illustration that included an emblem used by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which the university noted is labeled as a terror group by the U.S. government.

“The inclusion of symbolism from a U.S.-designated terrorist organization containing violent imagery in a publication by an MIT-recognized student group is deeply concerning. Moreover, the article makes several troubling statements, and the reports received noted that these statements could be interpreted as a call for more violent or destructive forms of protest at MIT. …,” wrote MIT’s Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards department to Iyengar in a letter dated Nov. 1.

The letter also claimed that “Numerous community members have expressed concern for their safety and well-being after learning of your article.”

MIT officially declined to comment specifically on the matter.

“We are not able to discuss individual cases or students,” wrote MIT spokeswoman Sarah McDonnell in an email to the Sampan. McDonnell said this policy is longstanding policy and “not related solely to this matter.”

McDonnell added that “MIT and its leadership are deeply committed to ensuring community safety, promoting student well-being, protecting free speech, and responding to policy violations,” and pointed to a webpage detailing the Institute’s disciplinary process for “handling incidents related to campus tensions stemming from the Israel-Hamas war,” 82 of which MIT has been in the process of resolving as of Oct. 10, before the Iyengar case began.

In an interview with the Sampan, Iyengar rejected assertions that his paper was a call for violence and said much of the accusations stemmed from other students trying to silence him, unfairly labeling him a “student terrorist” and a “virulent anti-Semite.”

“They claim that these statements could be viewed as an incitement to violence, and they’re basing this off of reports that they received,” said the 24-year-old student. “I think they’ve cherry picked quotes from the article to make it look like I’m calling for or inciting imminent violence at MIT, which is not true.”

Instead, Iyengar defends his essay as a critical work exploring the use of pacificism and its limits, as well as the imbalance of power between protesters and governments and other groups.

As for MIT’s complaint about imagery, he said, much of what appears in the magazine are widely recognized historical works, such as the image of the Vietnamese monk who set himself on fire. The university, he said, is also misrepresenting his work by associating it with terrorism because of the mere reproduction of a logo – variations of which are widely available online including on Wikipedia – of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Iyengar has been punished by the university before over his pro-Palestinian protest involvement, and was arrested for participating in nonviolent protests, he said, including at the MIT encampment last school year.

His lawyer, Eric Lee, called the punishment handed out by MIT part of a larger “nationwide assault on free speech.”

“Most major universities are engaged in this effort,” said Lee. “It’s on public record that this is being coordinated with the Biden administration’s department of education.”

The move comes amid other local attempts to silence students, teachers and others locally who speak out about Palestine, several of whom are also minorities. Iyengar is Indian American. MIT, for example, is also accused of punishing Haitian American Michel DeGraff, a professor of linguistics and the director of the MIT-Haiti Initiative. DeGraff says he has been banned from teaching a course on Palestine in his department. Late last week, MIT removed DeGraff’s status as a professor in linguistics and reclassified him as “faculty-at-large.”

“In more than 30 years of my being a university professor, this is the most dangerous threat I’ve ever witnessed against the foundations of higher education in the U.S. and beyond,” said DeGraff in an email to the Sampan, linking his case to Iyengar’s. “If professors are banned from teaching and if students are banned from writing on issues of deep concern and interest to them, to their communities and to the world, then what we’re dealing with is nothing short of fascism — which often starts with erasures of history, book burning, censorship of certain kinds of knowledge viewed as ‘disruptive’.”

Harvard University, meanwhile, has been criticized for banning students and faculty from a library because they were engaged in “silent study-in” demonstrations that began in support of Palestine.

In this case, however, Lee said he is most alarmed by the accusations of terrorism support. He noted that that label can carry real legal consequences, and potentially harm the visa status of international students.

Supporters of Iyengar noted what they called a stark double-standard by the university.

“First, they banned the edition of ‘Written Revolution’ from being distributed on campus, and then they banned Prahlad himself,” said Richard Solomon, a doctoral student at MIT, who spoke to a Sampan reporter during a small demonstration for Iyengar last week.

“It’s important for us in our community to express dissent, to say (that) we don’t agree with this kind of oppression and behavior against students who are expressing their opinions and using their First Amendment rights to contribute to discussions about how to enact change,” said Solomon, as nearly two dozen MIT police officers surrounded the small group of demonstrators.

When asked why he was supporting Iyengar, Solomon said, “For me, it’s personal. My own host brother in Gaza was killed in Israeli airstrike in August with his mom and dad and his brother. He is survived by a two-year-old girl named Hela. … He also has a 14-year-old brother who’s now an orphan, who has no one to care for him.”

*This article has been updated with some minor edits to the first two paragraphs.