President Biden will deliver commencement addresses next month at Morehouse College in Georgia and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point at a time when anger over U.S. foreign policy has led to an eruption of student protests at several campuses.
In addition to the relatively traditional speech at West Point, which presidents often deliver at least once during their tenure, the stop at Morehouse will give Mr. Biden an opportunity to speak to students at a historically Black college in a key battleground state as he works to shore up support among young voters.
The announcement from the White House on Tuesday came during heightened tensions at several universities, including Columbia, New York University and Yale, in which police have been called in to clear crowds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
Hundreds of people have been arrested while participating in campus demonstrations in recent days, and the disruptions at Columbia prompted the school to move classes online on Monday. Reports of demonstrators targeting and harassing Jewish students at Columbia over the weekend also drew rebukes from the White House, as Mr. Biden and White House aides warned that some demonstrations had veered into antisemitism or praise for those who have expressed it.
“I condemn the antisemitic protests,” Mr. Biden told reporters on Monday. “I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”
With rumors swirling in recent days that Mr. Biden would be the commencement speaker at Morehouse this year, the college’s provost sent an email to faculty members acknowledging unease about the selection and offering to field questions and concerns, according to an NBC report on Monday.
