USC: President Folt

October 7, 2023 marked a dramatic shift in Israel's occupation of Palestine. In response to the resistance attacks carried out by Hamas, Israel began an indiscriminate carpet bombing campaign, describing the military action as "self defense."

By April 2024, the situation in Gaza had become a polarizing topic among the USC campus community. While some advocated for Israel’s right to defend itself, others advocated for Palestine’s right to self-determination and freedom.

One such pro-Palestinian student was Asna Tabassum, who, after being named the class valedictorian by Folt, was accused by Trojans for Israel of “openly [trafficking] antisemetic and anti-Zionist rhetoric” in a link for Palestinian resources included in her Instagram bio.

Shortly thereafter, Provost Andrew T. Guzman canceled Tabassum's commencement speech, citing unspecified “safety concerns.”

In his April 15 communication shared with the campus community, Guzman stated the following: “This decision is not only necessary to maintain the safety of our campus and students, but is consistent with the fundamental legal obligation – including the expectations of federal regulators – that universities act to protect students and keep our campus community safe.”

Dr. Wolf Gruner, Shapell-Guerin chair in Jewish studies and professor of history at USC, believed the situation was completely overblown. “I don’t see any kind of real threat,” he said. “I think this is all imagination.”

Gruner, who also co-founded the resistance to genocide minor, worked closely with Tabassum throughout her studies. “She was my student… There was never a real threat against her revealed, which should have been if there was a threat,” Gruner said. “What we know by talk among faculty is that there’s also no police investigation. There’s also no FBI investigation, if there would have been threats against the university. So this was all made up for political reasons, and it’s unjustifiable what happened.”

The cancellation of Tabassum’s commencement speech sparked outrage across the campus and nation. In response, students organized Let Her Speak, a march advocating for Tabassum to be reinstated as speaker.

Shortly thereafter on April 24, 2024, USC’s Divest from Death Coalition took to Alumni Park to host an occupation in solidarity with Gaza. This action joined the nationwide movement of college campuses to hold encampments for Palestine.

The encampment, which began with yoga and teach-ins, turned violent when the Department of Public Safety (DPS) told protestors to take down their tents and attempted to arrest a student organizer. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was later called onto campus and executed a total of 93 arrests, about 60 of which were students.

Miguel Moya, a senior at the time majoring in health and human sciences, was one of the student protesters arrested by LAPD that day. “It didn’t get crazy until the cops showed up,” Moya said. “People started getting chased down. Cops started harassing people.”

According to Annenberg Media, LAPD officers dressed in riot gear had “batons, shields and ‘less-than-lethal’ weapons,” and “fired a single rubber bullet at the crowd” of student and community protesters.

Despite Folt's promise that “no students involved in the encampment were at risk of academic consequences for their participation,” arrested students faced academic discipline, at least 29 of which were placed on interim suspension.

After months of awaiting their disciplinary outcomes and graduating seniors, including Moya, having their diplomas withheld, students finally received word from the university’s Office of Community Expectations in early August that they were to write "remorseful" essays about “what they’ve learned.” According to students’ legal counsel, however, these essays “could be used in a criminal case by LAPD.”

New security measures such as gates, ID checkpoints and increased DPS presence have since been implemented on campus. Dr. Sarah M.A. Gualtieri, a professor of American studies and ethnicity, history and Middle East studies, and a member of the Palestine Justice Faculty Group at USC, observed the impact these security measures have had on the campus community.

“The securitization and militarization of campus has had a highly negative impact on the well being of many students, faculty and staff,” Gualtieri said in an email to Annenberg Media.

For Sandy Tolan, an author and journalism professor at USC, Folt’s initial decision to invite the LAPD onto campus signaled a great deal of dissonance.

“As you probably know, [the LAPD has] a terribly problematic history in South Los Angeles and south central and across Los Angeles,” Tolan said. “So to bring those officers in to arrest unarmed protesters and saying that that’s for the safety of the community is false.”

Tolan continued: “I think the decision to bring in the police and then subsequently to not recognize that they had made a mistake, to not reach out an olive branch to the students and even to some faculty who are now facing academic discipline, shows that they have no remorse whatsoever, and they're doubling down,” he said. “And now they've turned our campus into a fortress, and they don't seem to have any plans to remove these barriers, these checkpoints, which they, in a very Orwellian sense, are calling ‘welcoming tents.’”

Tolan was one of a select group of faculty members who were able to meet with President Folt, Provost Guzman and Senior Vice President Beong-Soo Kim to engage Folt in her decision making after the cancellation of Tabassum’s commencement speech and the events that followed.

“It was a very ad hoc meeting that lasted maybe an hour, and we literally were standing in the lobby of Bovard,” Tolan said. “So it wasn’t a satisfying meeting, but at least they met with us.”

Dr. Jody D. Armour, author and Roy P. Crocker professor of law at USC, was another one of the select faculty members who met with Folt. According to his recent X thread (formerly Twitter), Armour’s anti-genocide tweets have made him “the subject of an ‘Internal Assessment Triage Team’ (IATT) that includes EEO-TIX (USC’s Office for Equity, Equal Opportunity, and Title IX), the office of professionalism, campus attorneys, and others.”

“[We] were trying to make it clear to her that the students were doing something that we should not punish them for. We should not be punitive toward them,” Armour said about the meeting with Folt. “We should use this as an opportunity to educate, not be very draconian in our approach… She even acknowledged early on within her discussion with the academic senate that she should have handled things differently.”

However, Armour believes that nothing was learned on Folt’s part from the meeting. “She’s continued to go after the students in disciplinary proceedings. The campus now looks like we’re barricading ourselves against some kind of military onslaught,” he said.

According to Armour, Folt’s actions have negatively impacted students. “What she’s wound up doing is causing a lot of students a lot of distress and a lot of them feeling betrayed by their school for doing what they were taught to do in the classroom,” he said. “They were taught to stand up against injustice, to not always just go with the status quo, but to question, to interrogate and to take a stand, and that’s what they did.”

In a July 2024 letter addressed to Provost Guzman and Senior Vice President Kim, eight faculty members, including Tolan and Armour, reiterated their concerns, but, according to Tolan, never received a response.

What's next for Folt?

On May 8, 2024, shortly after the cancellation of Tabassum’s commencement speech, “the Academic Senate voted 21-7 to approve a resolution censuring university President Carol Folt and Provost Andrew Guzman, citing ‘widespread dissatisfaction and concern’ among the faculty,” according to Annenberg Media.

As of the fall 2024 semester, the details surrounding Folt’s tenure remain unknown. When her contract was amended and extended in July of this year, details regarding its duration were not disclosed to the public. In a statement to Annenberg Media, the university proclaimed: “The Board remains pleased with the university’s strong direction under President Folt’s leadership.”

When asked about her decision making process concerning the pro-Palestinian protests on USC’s campus and the removal of Silent Sam at UNC-Chapel Hill, Folt did not respond to Annenberg Media’s request for comment.

When asked the same question, Joel Curran, the senior vice president and chief communications officer of USC who also worked at UNC-Chapel Hill with Folt, responded to Annenberg Media with the following statement: “Due to the confidential nature of these are [sic] topics, I don’t discuss these publicly in any forum.”

“Now, isn’t that convenient?” Tolan said about the declared confidentiality of Folt’s decision making process.

In an article published by the Los Angeles Times on May 3, 2024, Folt is quoted saying, “I believe that all along the way, we’ve made the right choice.” Yet, five days later following her and Guzman’s censuring, Folt is quoted saying, “I don’t make every decision right, but I try,” marking a shift in how she previously described her decision making process.

Currently, Folt has not made another public statement regarding her decisions made up until this point.

So, what’s next for Folt and the campus community?

“I don't know. She’s not acting like she really recognizes that she did wrong, because if you recognize that you did wrong, you take steps to correct the wrong. You take corrective steps,” said Armour. “I haven’t seen that, so I don’t know. I can’t say beyond that.”