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USC promptly caved to pro-Israel outcry: On April 16, it announced it had canceled Tabassum's speech because "discussion related to the selection of our valedictorian has taken on an alarming tenor" and that "the intensity of feelings...has grown to include many voices outside of USC and has escalated to the point of creating substantial risks.” At the same time, USC also cancelled appearances by speakers and honorees that included Billie Jean King and "Crazy Rich Asians" director Jon Chu. 

After the USC decision, Tabassum issued a statement noting that, via her resistance to genocide minor--which emphasizes the Holocaust--"[I] have learned that ordinary people are capable of unspeakable acts of violence when they are taught hate fueled by fear.And due to widespread fear, I was hoping to use my commencement speech to inspire my classmates with a message of hope.By canceling my speech, USC is only caving to fear and rewarding hatred."

As for the commencement cancellation, USC's shut-it-all-down move echoes the excessive caution displayed by the American education system in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Those echoes are all too loud for USC seniors--four years ago, many of them were denied high school graduation ceremonies in the name of "safety."

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Now, their college commencement ceremony has been similarly vaporized, only by a different set of quivering academics. 

"It is both enabling and irresponsible.Rather than protect students and their families at this important and well-earned event in their lives, the university is yielding to the mob. It is a feckless and feeble response to what should have been an easy decision for any administrator," said Jonathan Turley.

After hearing the news, one of those seniors, who goes by @gracieflynn12, took to TikTok to vent: 

"The seniors that are graduating college right now are the seniors that graduated in 2020, where we didn't have a high school graduation. A lot of us had drive-through fake graduations or no graduation at all.And now we are seniors getting ready for our first real graduation and it just got cancelled...

...I just had my last class ever, and just right after, should be celebrating.But we just got the new that we have no graduation, so now all my roommates are depressed, and we were all literally just sitting in the living room in tears."

Here, a USC senior who was robbed of a high school graduation by the COVID Panic reacts to USC cancelling her college commencement because of an anti-Israel valedictorian and fear of protests…
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> This is the world that liberals want and are creating for her and her generation. pic.twitter.com/QhbTAfBBcp

— John Ziegler @Zigmanfreud April 26, 2024

...but at least one especially admirable voice against the Covid regime is being consistent: 

It was wrong for public health tyrants to cancel high school graduation for the senior class of 2020.
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> It is wrong for USC to cancel the big graduation ceremony for their undergraduate class of 2024.
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> Let the kids ok, young adults celebrate graduation for once! pic.twitter.com/FA6qR2mGQ0

— Jay Bhattacharya @DrJBhattacharya April 26, 2024

Jonathan Turley summed up the situation succinctly: "The problem of violent protests and threats on campus is not solved by removing the potential victims. To yield this ground is to surrender control over not just the campus but the academic operations of the school.Higher education has to aspire to be more than a mere mobocracy where threats not logic prevail."