Biden to deliver commencement at Morehouse College amid campus division over his presence

President Joe Biden on Sunday delivers his first commencement address of the 2024 season at Morehouse College, where the president may for the first time in months have to confront the angst that’s been percolating on college campuses nationwide toward his administration’s policies on the Israel-Hamas war.

President Joe Biden on Sunday delivers his first commencement address of the 2024 season at Morehouse College, where he may have to confront for the first time in months the angst that’s been percolating on college campuses nationwide toward his administration’s policies on the Israel-Hamas war. The commencement at Morehouse, a historically Black, all-male college in Atlanta that counts the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. among its alumni, could be the most direct exposure Biden has yet received to young peoples’ frustrations over his policies related to the war in Gaza. The announcement last month that Biden will be delivering the Morehouse commencement sparked outrage from a portion of the school’s faculty, prompting the school’s provost to convene an open forum in late April to address those concerns. But even amid the controversy, the school has been steadfast that it will not rescind Biden’s invitation, which was first extended in September – before the war began. Due to that backlash, and in anticipation of protests, the White House last week sent Stephen Benjamin, the director of its office of public engagement, to Morehouse to speak with some of the students. During a Thursday news briefing at the White House, Benjamin said he and the students had a wide-ranging conversation, including on the conflict in the Middle East. “I think what’s gonna be most important are the words that the president articulates,” Benjamin said at the White House. “And I know that he, he feels very deeply about what this means to these young men.”