Mahmoud Khalil Rebukes Columbia For Targeting Dissent With 'Repression Playbook'

In a searing op-ed dictated from detention, the student activist also implored his classmates to keep protesting for Palestinian freedom.

Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil rebuked what he called the school’s “repression playbook” that has opened the gates for higher education and the federal government to target dissent on campus and abduct students like him for their pro-Palestinian advocacy.

Khalil, a green card holder married to a U.S. citizen, was taken by federal immigration agents on March 8 for his role in helping lead last year’s antiwar protests on Columbia’s campus. While his court case plays out in New Jersey, Khalil remains held without charge in a Louisiana detention center – where he dictated to his attorney a searing op-ed for the Columbia Spectator that published Friday.

“The situation is oddly reminiscent of when I fled the brutality of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and sought refuge in Lebanon,” he said. “The logic used by the federal government to target myself and my peers is a direct extension of Columbia’s repression playbook concerning Palestine.”

Khalil accused the university of suppressing student-led dissent under the guise of combating antisemitism – including by giving Congress student disciplinary records, launching a task force that equates criticism of the state of Israel with hate speech, and creating an office that’s meant to review discrimination reports but “became a mechanism to persecute pro-Palestinian students with no due process.”

Columbia faced public backlash after deciding to acquiesce to the Trump administration, which threatened to withdraw hundreds of millions of dollars in funding if universities didn’t implement its restrictive demands that have been widely labeled as a crackdown on academic freedom, student dissent and free speech.