If nothing else, they made their voices heard.
WBUR’s “On Point” broadcast featuring former U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was interrupted by two pro-Palestinian protestors on Sept. 16.
While Sullivan was responding to a comment on the United States’ involvement in Israel, two pro-Palestinian protestors erupted in chants. Sullivan, who oversaw national security protocol under former President Joe Biden for four years, left his position eight months ago.
When Sullivan answered, “What happened on October 7th [was] a god-awful tragedy,” in response to a question regarding the United States’ relations with Israel, an unidentified member of the crowd stood up and said, “What’s worse than that is the fact that children in Gaza are dead because of you.”
The protestors were escorted out of the venue, shouting bold remarks such as “Jake Sullivan, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide” and “his legacy is a mountain of dead children.”
Sullivan was escorted off the stage shortly after, and police arrived for the remainder of the event.
Once Sullivan returned to the stage, he addressed the protest by acknowledging the disruption while defending the protestors right to speak out.
“I obviously profoundly disagree with the characterization of those individuals, but I also support their right to speak their mind,” he said.
Sullivan, who about a week prior to the Oct. 7 attacks remarked, “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades,” has received criticism from lawmakers and foreign policy analysts. In 2023, Sen. Marsha Blackburn called for Sullivan’s removal, stating he “has routinely misled the entire government about the status of security threats around the world.”
Sophomore Veronique Mintz said she found the protesting “disruptive” in nature.
“We basically lost five minutes roughly, and they had to take [Sullivan] out of the room just to bring him back in,” Mintz said. “That did not need to happen.”
Steven Davy, the senior producer and director at WBUR CitySpace, said the team has developed a protocol for how to “take the steam out of a disruption” during live events on controversial topics.
“It’s important when you have someone as high profile as Jake [Sullivan] is, that people have a chance to hear what he has to say, but also to hear our hard questions and how they respond, and a disruption is a disservice to that,” Davy said.
While WBUR live events have an online question submission portal where audience members can submit questions, they are filtered by Davy and displayed for the host to ask.
Sullivan and host Meghna Chakrabarti also spoke about current events on a global scale, including U.S. relations with Israel, Russia and China under the Trump administration. Additionally, Sullivan addressed the lack of cohesion within U.S. institutions and resulting threats to national security.
“If I think about the actual threats to the United States of America, no foreign actor represents as great a challenge as we potentially could represent to ourselves,” Sullivan said.”
Sullivan later returned to the discussion of the U.S.-Israel relations, stressing that “too many civilians, Palestinian civilians, have died” and “not enough aid has gotten in.”
While addressing Trump’s statement regarding his ability to end the Russia-Ukraine war on “day one” of being in office, Sullivan said Trump has fallen short.
“He has not done the things he said he was going to do, including months ago … suggesting that he would impose sanctions on Russia, and to this day, from beginning to end, he hasn’t done that,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan expressed his dissent with the Trump administration’s instilling fear of speaking out on certain issues and spoke to the importance of free speech.
“I think what makes America great [is that] people have First Amendment rights and they’re allowed to speak out,” Sullivan said. “I will fight for that every day, even when I disagree with somebody.”
