Prahlad Iyengar got expelled from MIT after writing a pro Palestine essay.
On Monday night, some 100 MIT students and community residents gathered in the City Hall foyer to demand that city councillors step in and prevent MIT from suspending pro-Palestinian student activists for their involvement in writing and political activities.
Who is Prahlad Iyengar as MIT student is expelled for Pro-Palestine essay, biography, parents, education, nationality, religion and Instagram
The five speakers expanded their remarks to address complaints about the university’s nonprofit status, which they claim permits it to act against pro-Palestinian students without adequate oversight, even though the “emergency rally” was promoted on social media to protest the suspension of Prahlad Iyengar, an MIT PhD student and National Science Foundation fellow.
MIT suspends student & bans student publication for article opposing Gaza genocide, claims article supports “terrorism.”
Read this statement from my client Prahlad Iyengar detailing the facts of this chilling attack on free speech. Now more than ever we must defend 1st Am!
1/4 pic.twitter.com/eYk7CiBEcY
— Eric Lee (@EricLeeAtty) November 8, 2024
“The fact that MIT is choosing to threaten student livelihood and careers simply because they don’t agree with what students are speaking up and protesting for is unacceptable,” said Sophie Coppieters ’t Wallant, the rally’s emcee.
The freak of nature in the kitchen towel and the bull ring is Prahlad Iyengar, a 2nd year PhD student at MIT. Yesterday, the institution suspended him after first having moved to expel him on charges.
Wonder what charges. 🤔 pic.twitter.com/ufr8z8BCRT
— Amit Schandillia (@Schandillia) December 9, 2024
According to organizers, Prahlad Iyengar was suspended on December 4; on Wednesday, he appealed the decision to MIT Chancellor Melissa Nobles. He is the head editor of the student-run political magazine Written Revolution where he penned an article that purportedly prompted his suspension.
Prahlad is a second year MIT PhD student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and in 2023, he was suspended for participating in pro-Palestinian rallies. According to an email sent by MIT Dean of Student Life David Warren Randall to the editors of the magazine, the imagery and language used by Prahlad in the essay On Pacifism could be “interpreted as a call for more violent or destructive forms of protests at MIT.”
He had gone to the Georgia Institute of Technology where he did his Bachelor of Science – BS, Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering.
Prahlad is an Indian origin Hindu. Details about his parents and family aren’t known.
In an email to the magazine’s editors, MIT Dean of Student Life David Warren Randall said that his essay, “On Pacifism,” in the October issue had language and images that “could be interpreted as a call for more violent or destructive forms of protest at MIT.”
A notice for a disciplinary hearing on December 4, the “same hearing MIT just used to suspend [Iyengar]” was also given to Rin, a senior at MIT who chose not to reveal her last name for fear of reprisals. She refused to discuss how she was singled out as an activist by the institution.
Additionally, they pointed out that the article’s accompanying photos feature insignia of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group that the US has classified as terrorist. “It is extremely alarming that a publication by an MIT-affiliated student organization would include violent imagery and symbolism from a U.S. designated terrorist organization,” they wrote.
This is the most recent dispute between students and officials about student expression over the Gaza War, and it serves as a striking illustration of the disagreement among demonstrators, organizations, and proponents of free speech regarding the precise definition of a call to violence.
PhD student Prahlad Iyengar and linguistics professor Dr. Michel DeGraff are currently facing retaliatory measures for their pro-Palestine activism on campus but how vowed that they will not back down. pic.twitter.com/liP5CuQH2D
— Peoples Dispatch (@peoplesdispatch) November 26, 2024
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