The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Colson Whitehead mentioned Thursday that he wouldn’t give the graduation tackle on the College of Massachusetts Amherst on Might 18 as deliberate, citing the administration’s resolution to name the police on campus protesters.
“I used to be trying ahead to talking subsequent week at UMass Amherst,” Mr. Whitehead wrote on the social community Bluesky. “However calling the cops on peaceable protesters is a shameful act. I’ve to withdraw as your graduation speaker. I give all my finest needs and congratulations to the category of ’24 and pray for the protection of the Palestinian folks, the return of the hostages, and an finish to this horrible struggle.”
Michael Goldsmith, a consultant for Mr. Whitehead, mentioned the writer had no additional remark.
The varsity mentioned that the ceremony would proceed with out a graduation speaker.
“We respect Mr. Whitehead’s place and remorse that he won’t be addressing the Class of 2024,” Ed Blaguszewski, a spokesman for the College of Massachusetts Amherst, mentioned in an announcement.
The police arrested about 130 folks on the College of Massachusetts Amherst on Tuesday night time after pro-Palestinian protesters refused to take away their encampments.
Mr. Whitehead, whose novels embody “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys,” is an awfully embellished writer. He has received the Pulitzer Prize twice, in 2020 and 2017, and was a finalist in 2002. He additionally received the Nationwide E-book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
He’s additionally one thing of shape-shifter, transferring simply between disparate genres. His ebook “Sag Harbor” was a coming-of-age novel, “Zone One” was a postapocalyptic zombie story, and “The Underground Railroad” adopted a younger enslaved girl who escapes from a Georgia plantation.
C Pam Zhang, the writer of “How A lot of These Hills Is Gold,” and Safiya Umoja Noble, writer of “Algorithms of Oppression” and a professor on the College of California, Los Angeles, have additionally withdrawn from graduation speeches this 12 months, in accordance with the web site LitHub. Each had been scheduled to talk on the College of Southern California’s Rossier College of Schooling.
