Mahmoud Khalil
On Saturday morning, June 21, I woke to the first day of summer. It was a beautiful morning; the first sunny Saturday since March (in the Boston area).
The first bit of news that I came upon was the story of the release of Mahmoud Khalil.
Mahmoud Khalil has been held without bail since March 8th this year. He was one of the first student protestors arrested by ICE. He was legally in America. He had just graduated from Columbia. He had gone through the immigration process, so his residency here was legal after his student visa expired. Mahmoud had a green card.
His crime, like that of Rumeysa Ozturk, is that he publicly supports BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) of Israel. Mahmoud was more of an active leader than Rumeysa; he led demonstrations and spoke for protestors when there was an encampment on the Columbia campus in 2024. Mahmoud’s organization at Columbia, (CUAD) states that it is a liberation organization, that claims aligned with other liberation, justice, and peace movements:
Columbia University Apartheid Divest is a coalition of student organizations that see Palestine as the vanguard for our collective liberation. We are a continuation of the Vietnam anti-war movement and the movement to divest from apartheid South Africa. We support freedom and justice for the Palestinian people, and for all people. We know that true collective safety will arise when everyone has access to clean air, clean water, food, housing, education, healthcare, freedom of movement, and dignity. [source]
The students who participated in the 2024 Columbia civil disobedience were expressing their free speech rights. Jewish students were harassed; so were Muslim students. There were Jewish students on both sides of this demonstration:
Zionists –
- Aligning with Israel’s right to exist but opposed to the war on Gaza.
- Aligning with Israel’s right to exist and supporting the war on Gaza.
Anti-Zionists –
- Aligning with Palestinians for the end of the State of Israel, to be replaced by Palestine. (“From the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea. Palestine will be free”).
Jewish students at Columbia were verbally and physically threatened for expressing any of these stances, depending on who they were talking to. Free speech hit a new low on that campus.
Muslim students felt the same tension.
In 2023-2024 academic year at Columbia, students reported that they felt unwelcome and unsafe – both Jewish and Muslim students. The student survey showed that
“Most Jewish (87%) and Muslim (82%) students felt concerned about expressing their beliefs. A majority of Jewish students—69%—said that expressing support for any side in the conflict had made them feel they were in personal danger, as did a majority of Muslim students—65%. In all cases, these percentages are far above what the survey showed for Columbia students overall (33%).” [Columbia student belonging and exclusion report, 2024]
In 2025, it was a Muslim student who was arrested and held without bail for expressing his opinion, peacefully. June 20 was a sunny day for Mahmoud, his (American) wife and newborn child. Detained: March 8-June 20, 2025.