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Cecilia Culver gave unapproved remarks in a 2025 graduation speech that went viral
An alumnus is suing George Washington University after she was banned from campus for giving a largely unauthorized graduation speech that called for the school to “divest from the apartheid state of Israel.”
Cecilia Culver, a 2025 commencement speaker, alleged discrimination and defamation against the university and her former employer Ernst & Young in a lawsuit filed on April 16, according to an article from The GW Hatchet, the school’s newspaper.
She is seeking financial compensation and a lift of her ban from campus.
The 167-page lawsuit claims that the university and her employer “coordinated to end [Culver’s] career— without process, without cause, and without conscience. All because she used the platform of her own graduation ceremony to speak a truth that made powerful people uncomfortable.”
Culver does not dispute that “her delivered address differed from a previously submitted draft,” according to the lawsuit. However, the university’s “speaker materials contained no prohibition on speakers departing from submitted drafts.”
It goes on to allege that her employer placed her on administrative leave less than 24 hours after her speech, but never identified a policy that Culver had violated.
She is seeking a long list of damages and injunctions, including a demand that the university to reinstate the video of her speech on its YouTube channel and a declaration that her employer’s and school’s conduct constituted a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Title VI prevents “unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, and/or association with persons of a protected race, color, and national origin.”
The College Fix emailed Culver’s attorney, Abdel-Rahman Hamed, multiple times for comment, but he did not respond.
The Fix also emailed the university media relations team, asking for comment on the lawsuit, but received no response.
The situation at the Washington, D.C. university raised larger concerns for one education organization that supports Israel and fights antisemitism.
Roz Rothstein, co-founder and CEO of StandWithUs, urged universities to ensure commencement ceremonies “not serve as platforms for misleading claims tied to a movement that harms both Jewish communities and prospects for peace.”
“In recent years, commencement speeches across the country have been used to promote disinformation about Israel in support of calls for anti-Israel divestment, a core demand of the [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions] campaign,” Rothstein told The Fix in a recent interview via email.
The BDS movement seeks to “end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians,” according to its website.
Rothstein said that the “issue is not unique to GW.”
“The use of commencement to promote BDS is especially troubling given that an official statement from the BDS Committee described the October 7 massacre as ‘a powerful armed reaction’, and the BDS leadership reportedly includes individuals from terrorist organizations including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” she told The Fix.
In her speech in May 2025, Culver urged the university to “divest” from Israel and the class of 2025 to “withhold donations” until it does.
“For over a year, we have watched a genocide be committed against Palestinians,” she said.
Culver continued, “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.”
Her remarks drew cheers from the crowd.
“I am ashamed to know my tuition is being used to fund genocide,” Culver continued. “Despite repeated calls from students and faculty to disclose all endowments and investments by the university and divest from the apartheid state of Israel, the administration has refused to negotiate in good faith.”
“Instead, they have repressed anyone with the courage to point out the blood on their hands,” she said.
“None of us are free until Palestine is free,” Culver concluded.
MORE: Trump admin finds GWU broke law ‘by acting deliberately indifferent’ to antisemitism
