Three days after USC canceled Asna Tabassum’s valedictory address, the ripples sent through the community converged again at Tommy Trojan on Thursday afternoon, where about 300 students and community members gathered in a silent march demanding Tabassum’s speech be reinstated. 

In their call for the protest posted to Instagram on Wednesday afternoon, the Muslim Student Union, Trojans for Palestine and the USC Student Coalition Against Labor Exploitation asked supporters to come wearing hoodies and masks “to symbolize the institutional silencing Asna is experiencing.” 

Daily headlines, sent straight to your inbox.

Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with the latest at and around USC.

By 2:30 p.m., the scheduled start time, Hahn Plaza grew packed with masked protesters — bearing the usual kaffiyehs, Palestinian flags and handwritten signs. An organizer distributed surgical masks to those who didn’t have them. Amid the crowd floated a photo of Tabassum, taken on campus by the Los Angeles Times, alongside a piece of printer paper with the words, “LET HER SPEAK.”

Hafeez, a student who, like other speakers, declined to provide further identification for fear of their safety, said in an interview before the protest began that they were here for “two main reasons.”

“Number one, there needs to be transparency. No one is believing this idea that safety was the reason behind this,” Hafeez said. “And the second part of this is also very simple: Tabassum needs to speak at commencement.”

Before the march, multiple students stepped forward to speak, including two students from Jewish Voice for Peace at USC.

“We must remain vigilant,” said Luca, a sophomore at USC who introduced themselves as an anti-Zionist Jew. “We must combat misinformation, we must hold those in power accountable and we must remember our collective power to make change.”

Then came the main event. On a campus otherwise bustling with preparations for the upcoming L.A. Times Festival of Books and prospective students’ campus tours, for a moment the noise on the east side of campus gave way to the shuffling of feet, the clicking of camera shutters and a helicopter whirring overhead as protesters marched, wordless, in solidarity with Tabassum. 

Building up to Thursday’s protest, the University’s announcement that Tabassum would no longer be speaking at the Class of 2024 commencement ceremony elicited widespread anger and frustration on multiple fronts. 

USC maintains that it made the decision due to “safety concerns.” That has quelled little of the backlash: Multiple groups and individuals, including Tabassum herself, accused the University of choosing not to protect her when it was able to; pro-Israel groups, meanwhile, took offense to the implication that Jewish and Zionist students were a threat to their Muslim peers. 

For days after Tabassum was selected as valedictorian, she and the University faced a litany of complaints and threats after she was found to have engaged with anti-Zionist content on social media — including a link in her bio to a slideshow calling for the “complete abolishment of the state of israel [sic].” 

Zionist groups on- and off-campus called the content, and by extension Tabassum, antisemitic. A campaign for her removal ensued; USC withstood it for six days before Provost Andrew Guzman announced the decision to strike her valedictory address.

Tabassum hadn’t even started writing her speech.

Outside Annenberg Hall — where the march briefly stopped after a lap through McCarthy Quad and down Trousdale Parkway — Hafeez towered over the crowd.

“Remove your mask,” they shouted into a megaphone. “Remove your mask in the face of those who want to silence us.”

At that point, the silent march ended its silence. Hafeez led the chants: “Let her speak! Let her speak! Let her speak!”

On and on, as the protesters made their way back to Tommy, the chants rang. A protester was distributing slips of paper with a QR code to a petition to reinstate Tabassum’s speech.

Back where it started, students took the podium — a small stepladder on the statue’s pedestal — thanking those who turned out in support and calling on them to continue pressuring the administration.

“As someone who struggled to find representation in my academic journey, the valedictorian represented a collective victory,” one speaker said. “Upon reading the email from Provost Guzman to the student body on Monday, this dream was instantly shattered. It truly reminded me that the achievements of minority students can be undermined by institutional bias in the blink of an eye.”

Another speaker said USC “has proven time and time again to marginalized students that we won’t be heard.”

“You may have silenced her on campus, but now the world is her podium,” they said.