An Indian-origin student pursuing PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been suspended until January 2026 following his pro-Palestinian activism and is currently appealing the university’s decision.

Prahlad Iyengar, also a National Science Foundation fellow, has been “suspended until January 2026,” according to a post on X by a group called ‘MIT Coalition Against Apartheid’.

This suspension effectively terminates Iyengar’s five-year NSF fellowship and severely disrupts his academic career, the organisation said in the post.

It added that Iyengar, a PhD student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, is “now appealing the decision” to the Chancellor at MIT Wednesday, the “last opportunity to end this persecution and restore academic dignity.

“This decision is the harshest among several sanctions resulting from speech-related activities, including an article” that Iyengar wrote for a student-run zine ‘Written Revolution, “which engaged in debate about the role of pacifism in the pro-Palestine movement.”

“This suspension is, in practice, an expulsion, as his readmission is entirely contingent upon approval from the same Committee on Discipline that handed down this harsh sanction,” the body said.

Iyengar is appealing his case with the Chancellor to “revoke or reduce” the “unjust sanctions” against him.

MIT Coalition Against Apartheid said it has launched a campaign to “put pressure on MIT’s administration to “stop criminalising students who stand on the right side of history.”

The organisation called on other institutions to support them.

In a call to action, the organisation is demanding that the MIT administration reverse Iyengar’s suspension before Wednesday and said over 100 people have asked the city of Cambridge’s councillors “to intervene on MIT’s suppression of pro-Palestinian student activism.”

An immigration attorney, Eric Lee, wrote on X that the decision against Iyengar is a “major blow to free speech everywhere. MIT’s admin is so deeply connected to the war profiteers that it cannot tolerate pro-Palestinian speech. This sets the tone for further attacks on speech coming under Trump.”

According to a November 14 report in WBUR, Boston’s NPR News Station, nearly 100 MIT students had rallied on campus after the university decided to ban the distribution of ‘Written Revolution’, described as a pro-Palestinian student-run magazine. The magazine included the article ‘On Pacifism’ authored by Iyengar, who, according to the WBUR report, was also an editor of the magazine.

The WBUR report further said that according to an email sent by MIT Dean of Student Life David Warren Randall to the editors of the magazine, the ‘On Pacifism’ article featured imagery and language that “could be interpreted as a call for more violent or destructive forms of protest at MIT.”

“Randall’s email also cited the inclusion of several images in the article, including one that incorporates the logo of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which has been designated by the US State Department as a terrorist organisation,” the WBUR report said.

At the time, Iyengar was quoted as saying in the WBUR report, “We want to say this is a gross violation of free speech.”

He had added that the purpose of the magazine was to “put out, in our own words, what we were doing, why we were doing it and what was happening on campus.”

The WBUR reported that after the publication of the magazine’s October issue, “Iyengar said MIT barred him from entering campus.”

In an email to Iyengar, “the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards cited ‘a series of continuing behaviours’ that included his essay, a protest held outside a campus lab and an email sent to grad students and postdoctoral researchers who work in the lab,” the WBUR report said.

Iyengar was also suspended last year following the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that had erupted across US universities in the wake of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A group of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) interrupted an Israeli professor, Shahar Kvatinsky’s lecture with an odd protest that included pizza stealing and war criminal claims.

Kvatinsky, a visiting lecturer at the University of Toronto, was discussing his experiences as an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) reservist officer in Gaza after the October 7th tragedy at an event organised by the MIT Israel Alliance. He described the Israeli military’s stringent rules of engagement and related stories of discovering weapons hidden in residential buildings.

The normally uneventful lecture took an odd turn, though, when one student quietly left the room, taking four pizza boxes meant for the audience. This student, along with others, berated Kvatinsky during Q&A, outlining charges of war crimes and calling him a “murderer.” Other students did the same, citing reports of IDF soldiers raping women that had already been proven false.

With increasing frustration, Kvatinsky stated that “facts don’t matter to them” and that the students weren’t really listening to his explanation but were only reciting prepared lines.

Only more mayhem ensued as two more students stole five more pizzas and fled the room, and a third student pulled out a sign that said, “MIT Jews oppose genocide,” as he was leaving the lecture.

Will Sussman, an MIT computer science student who attended the event, posted on social media about the event.

I won’t repeat everything the anti-Israel students said to tonight’s guest speaker at @MIT, Prof. Shahar @Kvatinsky. But there’s one thing I can’t stop thinking about:

They took nine pizzas.

First a student took four pizzas, left, and came back to call the veteran professor a… pic.twitter.com/3Kuy0BppuJ

— Will Sussman (@WillSussmanPhD) September 19, 2024

There’s one thing I can’t stop thinking about: the protesting students took nine pizzas, said Will Sussman. 

Harvard University again threatened suspensions for pro-Palestinian protesters if they don’t leave a campus encampment, escalating tensions in an impasse that’s left the school as one of the few elite colleges that hasn’t forcibly removed demonstrators.

The Ivy League university has so far resisted calling in the police to clear the encampment, a move that President Alan Garber has said would require a “very, very high bar.” That’s in contrast to other schools that have cracked down on protesters ahead of commencement ceremonies, a marquee event for graduating students, parents and powerful donors.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania cleared similar encampments early Friday, resulting in more than 40 arrests at the two schools, following a police sweep at Columbia University last week.

The protesters want the universities to – among other demands – cut their financial and academic ties to Israel, moves that are aimed at pressuring the country to stop its military operation in Gaza. Israel launched a counterattack that’s killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in the enclave after a deadly Oct. 7 assault on the Jewish state by Hamas. The group, designated a terrorist organization by the US, killed more than 1,200 people and is still holding hostages.

While some schools such as Brown University and Northwestern have agreed with protesters to hold discussions on divestment in exchange for an end to encampments, other rich institutions like Harvard, Columbia and Penn have rebuffed such demands. Garber has said he “will not entertain” calls for divestment.

Rich donors from Robert Kraft to Marc Rowan and Barry Sternlicht have expressed furious opposition over the schools’ handling of the protests. Many university administrators have long viewed the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, or BDS, movement against Israel as antisemitic because it calls into question the legitimacy of the Jewish state and singles out the policies of one country.

Read more: Colleges Ripped for Agreeing to Hear Israel Divestment Demands

Protesters didn’t resist police action at Penn and MIT on Friday morning, the schools said. Penn said its officers and the Philadelphia Police Department arrested 33 protesters for defiant trespass. Nine students were among those arrested and later released, a Penn spokesperson said, adding that heavy gauge chains and smaller chains that could be used as weapons had been recovered upon a search.

MIT Police arrested 10 protesters. President Sally Kornbluth said she had “no choice but to remove such a high-risk flashpoint at the very center of our campus.”

Harvard is trying to prepare for upcoming campus events on the Yard, where the encampment currently stands, including the main commencement May 23, an event that typically draws more than 30,000 people.

The process of placing protesters on involuntary leave continues to move forward, a spokesperson for the school said Friday. Suspended students wouldn’t be allowed on campus or in Harvard housing, Garber said this week.

“The ongoing protest encampment within Harvard Yard has continued in violation of university policies, creating a significant disruption to the educational environment at a key time in the semester as students are taking finals and preparing for commencement,” the spokesperson said.

The Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance slammed “Harvard’s fecklessness” and urged its members to “encourage bold action” by the school’s leadership. The alumni group said the encampment should be disbanded immediately, “by force if necessary,” and the students behind it expelled.

The student group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine said early Friday that Garber rejected a proposal “that would move Harvard forward on transparency and ethical investment” in exchange for taking down their encampment.

The spokesperson for the school said Garber offered to arrange a meeting between students and a member of a shareholder responsibility committee, but only if the protest came to a voluntary end.

“President Garber has made clear the university’s commitment to reasoned discussion of complex issues, including the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “However, as he said, ‘Initiating these difficult and crucial conversations does not require, or justify, interfering with the educational environment and Harvard’s academic mission.'”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)