At MIT, Written Revolution joined Poetry of the Camps by hosting four poetry events and a finale in Kresge Little Theater. Together, we connected students in the Coalition for Palestine at MIT and community members in Cambridge and Boston with Rohingya students in the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, as well as displaced students from Gaza.

Through this program, students reflected on several key themes and wrote poems which they shared in an intimate poetry recital.

Yet, the path was not easy. During Fall 2024, PhD student Prahlad Iyengar - our main student collaborator and co-editor of Written Revolution - was banned from MIT for writing a piece titled On Pacifism. He may no longer be able to continue his graduate studies. The fifth edition is still restricted from being shared on the MIT campus and students refer to it as the ‘banned edition.’ Due to his ban, Iyengar was not able to be in attendance for our final event, but we still shared his words with our audience. Despite all odds, Prahlad and the Written Revolution team dedicated their sixth edition to our collective poetry which you can access here.

To this day, MIT students continue to undergo disciplinary hearings while dealing with arrests, suspensions, evictions, and campus bans. Some students are banned for years even after they have graduated - all for exercising their right to express themselves. And yet these students continue to show up, and they continue to persevere.