Around 75 graduates and audience members walked out during the winter commencement protesting the ceremony’s commencement speaker, Israeli-American billionaire-businesswoman Shari Arison.

The student group that organized the walkout, Students Against Israeli Apartheid, listed its grievances against Arison and her business conglomerate in an open letter coauthored by recent graduate Tareq Radi (’13) and Professor Craig Willse.  The letter criticized the university for honoring Arison “given the central role the Arison Group plays in Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid state.”