Dear President Folt, Chairwoman Johnson and members of the Board of Trustees, Provost Guzman, Senior Vice Presidents Curran, Garrison, Kim, Vice President Allard, and Chief DEI Officer Bradley,

Your selection of Ms. Asna Tabassum as USC Valedictorian threatens irreparable damage to USC’s reputation and will cast an ugly scar upon what should be milestone celebration day for all of your graduating seniors. Although Ms. Tabassum has distinguished herself academically and through service organizations, she has also engaged in hostile and racially divisive exclusionary conduct that flagrantly violates USC’s six unifying values and deeply offends members of the Jewish community. 

Beyond reviewing Ms. Tabassum’s impressive GPA and extensive community involvement, please focus on the parts of her background that were not included in her application for the Valedictorian honors. Ms. Tabassum’s Instagram profile is hidden from public view; however, the single line that constitutes the public portion of her account is deeply troubling. As the sole feature of her profile, she includes a URL for highly biased information she sponsors for readers to “learn about what’s happening in Palestine.” 

While the six unifying values of USC demand that all community members embrace “inclusion,” Ms. Tabassum’s link takes a swinging bat at over 10% of the USC student body and mudslings by calling Zionists “racist-settlers.” https://free-palestine.carrd.co/#zionism. Imagine if any marginalized group were blasphemed as racists or racist-settlers for celebrating their community pride. Would USC sanction labelling the LGBTQ community as racists because they recognize “Pride Day”? Would USC tolerate smearing the Latino community as racist for recognizing Latin American Heritage month? Would USC tolerate any other historically oppressed group of people be denied their right of self-determination, or their indigenous rights in their own homeland?

Worse yet, Ms. Tabassum’s link gets more divisive further on the same page.  By way of background, please note that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance defines antisemitism to include “targeting the State of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.” The City of Los Angeles and the federal government both endorse the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Ms. Tabassum unabashedly and openly endorses the link’s calls for “the complete abolishment of the state of israel [sic, uncapitalized].” https://free-palestine.carrd.co/#zionism. As if the unqualified command for abolition of the State of Israel was unclear in any way, Ms. Tabassum’s link reinforces racism with another link, urging readers to “reject the hegemonic efforts to demand that Palestinians accept that Israel has a ‘right to exist’ as a . . .  Jewish state.” https://decolonizepalestine.com/rainbow-washing/faithwashing/, linked from https://free-palestine.carrd.co/#introduction.

There could be no greater “targeting the State of Israel” within the IHRA definition of antisemitism than a call for total abolition of the State of Israel! This is the embodiment of hostile, ugly antisemitism and deeply offends the Jewish community, which is a valued part of the USC community. More than that, such calls for the abolishment of an entire country bring into question whether Ms. Tabassum engages in, or supports, illegal national origin discrimination targeting Israelis.

If Ms. Tabassum has not adequately alienated and offended the Jewish community, she adds more, offering up the gratuitous and unfounded accusation that the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel was accomplished as follows: “rape was another tactic they used. many palestinians fled their villages in fear of the women in their families being raped by zionist soldiers.”[all lower case in original] https://free-palestine.carrd.co/#plandalet.

Apart from peddling this call for the abolition of the State of Israel, and smear of Zionist Jews (90% of Jews) as “racists” and “rapists,” Ms. Tabassum takes an additional swing by “liking” a slide defining Zionists as “extremists.”  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cy6QvCcRZLv/.

That this extensive and multi-faceted attack on Jews was discovered from only the single line of public content in Ms. Tabassum’s IG profile is overwhelming and frightful. I shudder to think what the nonpublic portions of her content might contain. Let us not even go there.  

Crucially, it needs to be remembered, in context, that in January 2022, President Folt said in a letter that USC was taking steps to support the Jewish community after concerns were raised about “antisemitic and anti-Zionist posts on social media.” https://www.president.usc.edu/2022/01/14/presidents-letter-to-members-of-uscs-jewish-community/ . This letter claimed that the Advisory Committee on Jewish Life would act “to tangibly support Jewish and Zionist students, faculty, and staff.” Selecting Ms. Tabassum as valedictorian, in light of the clearly anti-Zoinist and antisemitic views described above, appears to be a repudiation of President Folt’s letter and a rejection of USC’s promise to support the Jewish community.

It has been less than five years since the Varsity Blues scandal, perhaps the worst in USC’s history, shook this University to its core. No doubt, one of the lessons of that scandal was that community members must be evaluated not only by who they tell you they are, but equally important is the information they hide from you. In its public explanation of the scandal, USC explained that its former Athletic Director “intentionally concealed information from the Office of Admission.” https://change.usc.edu/usc-information-on-college-admissions-issue/. Please avoid again making the near-fatal mistake of only considering the information an applicant wants you to see. Ms. Tabassum has concealed from you a wide swath of who she is and what she stands for. Please explore that hidden side of her. Antisemitism and calls for the abolition of an entire nation are unacceptable. There is no room for this anti-social, antisemitic, exclusionary and divisive ideology on the USC six-segmented wheel of unifying values. 

I urge you to revisit your selection of the 2024 valedictorian in light of this information, and please select a different, more appropriate honoree. The horrific, antisemitic, racist and slanderous vitriol revealed from just a single line of Ms. Tabassum’s private profile is shocking. A crucial factor that the Valedictorian Selection Committee is tasked with considering is the applicant’s contribution to community life. While Ms. Tabassum’s academic and service accomplishments are many, please do not be fooled. She is not your exemplary Trojan. She is a Trojan horse. 

Sincerely,