Youssef Hasweh finished up finals Friday, a little more than a week before he was due to participate in graduation ceremonies and receive his bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago.
But hours after completing his exams, Hasweh said he and three other seniors received an email saying their degrees would be withheld until the resolution of a school disciplinary process related to their involvement in an encampment on the Hyde Park campus to protest the Israel-Hamas war.
“UChicago was my dream school, and it’s also the school that tried to give me a criminal record and refuses to give me a degree,” Hasweh, 22, said of an arrest on campus related to his protest activites and the email from school officials. “I don’t think anyone should look at UChicago the same ever again after this year.”
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In the Friday email from the university, Jeremy Inabinet, associate dean of students, said the seniors would still be able to participate in graduation and other end-of-year events, but that their degrees would be withheld until the process was complete. Hasweh said he and the others planned to display their empty diploma cases as they walk at graduation Saturday.
Citing a student conduct guide, Inabinet said the school’s actions were “consistent with past practice.”
“The recent protests on campus brought about multiple formal complaints alleging that students violated university policies, including by engaging in disruptive conduct,” the university said in a statement Sunday. “When such complaints are referred to the Disciplinary Committee, degrees may be withheld until the case is resolved in order to allow a complete process.”
The university’s discipline process includes a fact-finding stage, a hearing with a committee of university staff to discuss the allegations between the person who filed the complaint and the accused, and ultimately ends with the committee voting on a sanction.
A timeline isn’t given in the school’s disciplinary guidelines, so it wasn’t immediately clear when determinations in the students’ cases would be made.
Possible sanctions can come in the form of warnings, probation, loss of access to some buildings, suspension or expulsion. Students have 15 days after being notified of the outcome to challenge it, though this can only be on the grounds of new information coming to light or the process set by the university being followed improperly.
If a hearing had not been scheduled by graduation, “the Dean of Students or the Faculty Chair of the University-wide Disciplinary Committee has the discretion and authority to decide whether the accused student may receive the degree and/or participate in convocation,” according to university policy.
Hasweh, who has family in the West Bank, is now facing a second disciplinary case at the school related to pro-Palestinian protests, which have occurred on university campuses across the country and led to congressional hearings.
He said he was among more than two dozen students and faculty members who were arrested in October at a sit-in at the school’s admissions office while demanding a public meeting with the university’s president, Paul Alivisatos, on the investments of its endowment fund.
These demands evolved into “disclose, divest, repair,” in which students demand the university disclose its investments, divest from those with ties to Israel and arms companies, and help to repair the damage done to Gaza’s universities. The protesters also wanted the school to stop development on the South Side and to put money toward repairing the “harm” it had caused to the area through prior investments.
The misdemeanor charge against Hasweh was later dropped, but the university continued to pursue discipline within its own system. He said he was also fired from his position in the admissions office after the arrest.
After an eight-month disciplinary process, he and other students were given a “first warning” an hour after being told their degrees were being temporarily withheld.
“Was arresting me not enough?” Hasweh asked. “Was investing in murdering my family in Palestine not enough?”
Hasweh says he believes the school’s email is an attempt to “scare” people out of protesting on campus despite the school heralding itself as a bastion of free speech.
Though he was frustrated because some family members had already made plans to travel to Chicago for the first time, he said he was more bothered by the school’s response to protesters and its ignoring “scholasticide,” or the devastation of the educational system in Gaza as a result of Israel’s bombing campaigns.
“Degrees or sanctions don’t matter,” Hasweh said. “I would do this a hundred times over if it means that I can, in some capacity, fight for people” who can’t get degrees anymore.
