An Indian-origin student pursuing a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been suspended until January 2026 for his pro-Palestinian activism and is currently appealing the university's decision.
Prahlad Iyengar, also a fellow of the National Science Foundation, has been “suspended until January 2026,” according to a post on
This suspension effectively ends Iyengar's five-year NSF fellowship and seriously disrupts his academic career, the organization said in the post.
It added that Iyengar, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, is “now appealing the decision” to MIT's chancellor Wednesday, the “last chance to end this persecution and restore academic dignity.”
“This decision is the most severe of many sanctions resulting from speech-related activities, including an article” Iyengar wrote for a student-run magazine 'Written Revolution' that debated the role of pacifism in the pro-Palestinian movement. “
“This suspension is in practice an expulsion, as his readmission is entirely dependent on the approval of the same Commission for Discipline that imposed this severe sanction,” the agency said.
Iyengar is appealing his case to the chancellor to “rescind or reduce” the “unjust sanctions” against him.
MIT Coalition Against Apartheid said it has launched a campaign to “put pressure on the MIT government to” stop criminalizing students who are on the right side of history.
The organization called on other institutions to support them.
In a call to action, the organization demands that the MIT government reverse Iyengar's suspension by Wednesday, saying more than 100 people have asked Cambridge city council members “to intervene in MIT's suppression of pro-Palestinian student activism .”
An immigration lawyer, Eric Lee, wrote on X that the decision against Iyengar is a “major blow to free speech everywhere. The MIT administrator is so deeply connected to the war profiteers that he cannot tolerate pro-Palestinian statements. attacks on speech under Trump.”
According to a November 14 report in WBUR, Boston's NPR News Station, nearly 100 MIT students gathered on campus after the university decided to ban the distribution of “Written Revolution,” described as a pro-Palestinian student-run magazine. prohibit. The magazine contained the article “On Pacifism,” written by Iyengar, who was also the editor of the magazine, according to the WBUR report.
The WBUR report further said that according to an email sent by MIT Dean of Student Life David Warren Randall to the magazine's editors, the article “On Pacifism” contained images and language that “could be interpreted as a call to more violent or destructive violence. forms of protest at MIT.”
“Randall's email also cited the inclusion of several images in the article, including one featuring the logo of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State,” WBUR said report.
Iyengar was quoted in the WBUR report at the time: “We want to say that this is a gross violation of freedom of expression.”
He had added that the purpose of the magazine was to “show in our own words what we were doing, why we were doing it and what was happening on campus.”
WBUR reported that after the publication of the magazine's October issue, Iyengar said that MIT had denied him access to campus.
In an email to Iyengar, “the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards cited 'a series of ongoing behaviors,' including his essay, a protest held outside a campus laboratory and an email sent to students and postdoctoral researchers who work in the laboratory,” the WBUR report said.
Iyengar was also suspended last year following the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that broke out at American universities in the wake of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
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