ATLANTA (AP) — When he gives the speech at Morehouse College, President Joe Biden will have its most direct engagement with college students since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in a center of black politics and culture.
Morehouse is based in Atlanta, the largest city in the swing state of Georgia, which Biden has flipped from the past President Donald Trump four years ago. Biden’s speech on Sunday will come as he seeks to make inroads with an important and symbolic constituency — young black men — and restore the diverse coalition that elected him to the White House.
The announcement of the speech last month sparked peaceful protests and calls for the university administration to halt Biden’s stance in the war between Israel and Hamas. Some students at Morehouse and other historically black campuses in Atlanta say they are vocally opposing Biden and the decision to allow him to speak, a reflection of the tension Biden faces in many communities of color and with young voters nationally.
Morehouse President David Thomas said in an interview that the emotions surrounding the speech made it all the more important that Biden speak.
“In many ways, these are the moments Morehouse was born for,” he said. “We need a place in this country that can hold the tensions that threaten to divide us. If Morehouse can’t hold those tensions, then no place can.”
The speech comes at a crucial time for Biden in his general election rematch against Trump. Biden continues to lag in support among both Black voters and people under 30, groups that were key to his narrow 2020 victories in several battleground states, including Georgia.
According to a March poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 55 percent of Black adults approved of how Biden is handling his job as president, a figure far below that seen earlier in his presidency. A total of 32% of 18 to 29 year olds in the same poll agreed.
“This is a global catastrophe in Gaza, and Joe Biden coming in to take our votes is political blackface,” said Morehouse sophomore Anwar Karim, who urged Thomas and school administrators to rescind Biden’s invitation.
Recent scenes on American campuses reflect the concerns of many young voters about Israel’s attacks in Gaza. Biden has supported Israel since Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took hundreds of hostages on October 7. That includes arms supplies to the long-standing US ally, even as Biden calls for a ceasefire, criticizes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tactics and the civilian death toll in Gaza exceeds 35,000 people, many of them women and children.
Many younger black people have identified with the Palestinian cause, sometimes drawing parallels between Israeli rule over the Palestinian territories and South Africa’s now-defunct apartheid system and abolishing Jim Crow laws in the US. Israel rejects claims that its system of laws for Palestinians constitutes apartheid.
“I think the president will do himself a good job if he doesn’t hide that, especially when you think about the audience he’ll be speaking to directly and to the nation,” Thomas said.
Sunday’s speech will culminate a four-day period in which Biden will focus on reaching Black communities. On Thursday, the White House will receive plaintiffs from the Brown v. Board of Education case, which banned legal segregation of U.S. public schools. The next day, Biden will address an NAACP meeting commemorating the 70th anniversary of the historic decision.
Former U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, a longtime Biden ally who helped broker his Morehouse speech, said he understood students’ concerns but emphasized that Biden has put pressure on Netanyahu and favored a two-state solution for the Israelis and the Palestinians supports. Trump has now effectively abandoned that long-held US position and said Israel must “solve the problem” in Gaza.
“That doesn’t come up anywhere in the conversation,” Richmond said.
The debate over Biden’s speech at Morehouse reflected a fundamental tension between historically black colleges and universities, both of which are committed to social justice and black progress and are led by administrators committed to maintaining order.
“We sometimes look like a very conservative institution,” Thomas said. “On the one hand, the institution must be the stable object where we now find ourselves in the world.”
But, he added, the university’s long-term goal is to “support our students in the pursuit of a better world.”
The backlash started even before Thomas publicly announced Biden would run. The faculty sent managers a letter of concern, which prompted an online town hall. Alumni collected hundreds of signatures urging Thomas to rescind Biden’s invitation. The petition called the invitation inconsistent with the pacifism that Martin Luther King Jr., a Morehouse alumnus, expressed in opposing the Vietnam War.
Some students note that leaders at Morehouse and other HBCUs did not always support King and other civil rights activists who are revered today. For example, Morehouse expelled actor Samuel L. Jackson in 1969 after he and other student Morehouse trustees, including King’s father, were detained in a campus building as part of demanding curriculum changes and the appointment of more black trustees.
Students organized two recent protests at the Atlanta University Center (AUC), a consortium of historically black institutions in Atlanta that includes Morehouse. Chants included “Joe Biden, f–off!” and “Biden, Biden, you can’t hide. We accuse you of genocide,” along with insults directed at Thomas.
“Our institution supports genocide, and we turn a blind eye,” said Nyla Broddie, a student at Spelman College, which is part of the AUC. Brodie argued that Biden’s Israel policy should be seen in the broader context of U.S. foreign policy and domestic police violence against Black Americans.
Thomas said he is “very positive about graduation” and that “not one” Morehouse senior — there are about 500 at the all-male private school — has opted out of participating. “That’s not to say that the feelings about what’s happening in Gaza don’t resonate with people in our community,” Thomas said.
Thomas met privately with students, as did several administrators. The Morehouse alumni association hosted a student town hall, featuring at least one veteran of the Atlanta Student Movement, a civil rights-era organization.
But there was a consistent message: withdrawing the invitation to the President of the United States was not an option. When students asked about endowment investments in Israel and U.S. defense companies, they said they were told the relevant amounts are negligible, a few hundred thousand dollars in mutual funds.
“I think people are excited” about Biden’s arrival, said Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor of King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Warnock said Biden is “in a great position” to talk about student debt relief, increased federal support for HBCUs and other achievements.
HBCUs have not seen a crackdown by law enforcement like those at Columbia University in New York City and the University of California, Los Angeles. However, Morehouse and the AUC have seen peaceful demonstrations, petitions and private meetings among stakeholders on campus. Xavier University, a historically black university in Louisiana, withdrew its invitation to U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s commencement, citing a desire among students “to enjoy a commencement ceremony without disruption.”
Whether Morehouse graduates or other students protest Biden or disrupt the ceremony remains to be seen. Student protest leaders say they are not aware of any plans to demonstrate indoors during commencement.
Thomas, Morehouse’s president, pledged that forms of protest at commencement that “do not disrupt the ceremonies” will not result in sanctions for any student.
But he also promised to end the program early if disruptions increase.
“We will not create — on the Morehouse campus — a national media moment,” he said, “where our failure to manage these tensions results in people being zip-tied out of a Morehouse ceremony by police.”
