“I really hope that it will be possible to issue some kind of common statement,” Yasin said.

He said he hoped to reach agreement or at least “respectful disagreement” about the speech.

According to petition leaders, some students are considering handing out flyers on Commencement Day explaining their opposition to Yasin’s speech and the way in which it was chosen. The petitioners object that the speech selection committee consists of six professors and administrators and receives no student input as it chooses the student orators for Commencement.

Hilary L. Levey ’02, the petition’s most visible leader, said organizers plan to continue the petition against Yasin’s speech “for as long as we need to” but pledged to refrain from more visible or disruptive protests at Commencement.

“Certainly we’re not planning on disturbing the speech,” she said.

She accused some of the speech selection committee members of pursuing political agendas. Thomas signed the recent petition calling for Harvard and MIT to divest from Israel. And Shinagel said at a meeting with concerned students last Friday that while Hamas does support some terrorist activity, the group also does humanitarian work in the Middle East.

Thomas responded in an e-mail on Friday that his selection of the speech was “not controlled by my political outlook” and said the speech contains no references to Middle East conflict.

Petitioners had asked the selection committee to release the full text of Yasin’s speech before Commencement Day, but speeches traditionally remain unreleased until after students deliver them. Thomas said releasing only Yasin’s speech would create a double standard.

“It’s never happened before, I don’t see why it should happen this time,” he said.

Addressing the initial objections to his speech, Yasin said late last month his speech is not political and is meant to relate the original religious meaning of “jihad” to the direction that seniors may take their lives after graduation.

“It’s a speech about the privileged opportunities and responsibilities we have as graduates,” he said, “and about how these are enunciated in both the Islamic concept of jihad and in American ideals.”

University Marshal Richard M. Hunt, another member of the selection committee, said the speech does not deal with the Middle East at all and is “healing” and “non-confrontational.”

—Staff writer Stephanie M. Skier can be reached at skier@fas.harvard.edu.