When Smith College student organizers Priya Dalal-Whelan and Midge Hayward heard that a prominent pro-Palestinian activist at Columbia University was arrested and facing potential deportation by federal immigration authorities over the weekend, they experienced a mix of outrage and fear.
“I think that it was just really scary to hear. I think it sets a really scary precedent for this policy of kind of blurring the lines or trying to frame people as not American or strip us of our legal rights for speaking on certain issues,” said Dalal-Whelan, who is part of Smith Students for Justice in Palestine.
Mahmoud Khalil, 30, a lawful U.S. resident who was a graduate student at Columbia until December, was arrested Saturday by federal immigration agents and flown to an immigration jail in Louisiana, according to the Associated Press.
He has not been charged with a crime, but President Donald Trump has argued that protesters forfeited their rights to remain in the country by protests he claimed support Hamas, the Palestinian group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil is the first “of many to come,” according to Trump.
Dalal-Whelan said student organizers have “always been working knowing there’s a certain amount of danger,” especially with mass protests at the University of Massachusetts Amherst a few miles away, but this federal action took it to another level.
“It’s obviously very scary for us, but I think it’s also moving people to take action,” she said.
Smith’s chapter of National Students for Justice in Palestine joined nationwide protests on Tuesday at noon to walk out of class in response to “attacks on the Student Movement and popular education.”
The Trump administration said the arrest was in support of Trump’s executive order on antisemitism, claiming that Khalil led activities which aligned with Hamas, which the United States has designated a terrorist organization.
The characterization of American campuses as antisemitic, “strikes me as an exercise of gaslighting by the Trump camp,” said Mathias Risse, Harvard professor and the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.
He said the administration is using accusations of antisemitism as a tactic to attack those who “do not easily fall in line with their illiberal understanding of democracy.”
“The gaslighting enables them to pursue these sinister goals from a moral high ground and enlist people who genuinely believe they occupy this ground,” Risse said.
While there haven’t been any arrests at Massachusetts institutions yet, protests and encampments at colleges and universities in the state drew similar national attention to the ones at Columbia University.
Six Massachusetts colleges and universities are among 60 that were named announcing investigations into whether they have failed to meet their obligations to Jewish students under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Harvard is one campus that faces particular attention. Last week Trump’s federal task force on antisemitism said Harvard and Columbia would be among 10 schools that they will visit in response to antisemitism concerns. The administration later announced it would be pulling $400 million from Columbia.
In reaction, Harvard University announced a temporary hiring freeze, following in the footsteps of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Will the arrest impact free speech in Mass.?
For students, faculty and organizers in Massachusetts, the arrest of Khalil meant something different.
Some raised concerns with how the arrest will infringe upon free speech in the country, especially on higher education campuses. Others said it was the right — and law-abiding — thing to do.
Ruth Wisse, a former Harvard professor and senior fellow at the Tikvah Fund, a conservative nonprofit promoting Jewish thought and ideas, said what the Trump administration is doing is a reaction to what is wrong at the universities.
“The government should not have had to come in like the cavalry to save the university from itself,” Wisse said.
Wisse said universities need to be corrected from within and need to blame themselves instead of trying to “scapegoat the Trump administration for coming in and doing what it felt it had to do because the universities would not correct themselves.”
Lawrence Summers, a former Harvard University president and critic of the institution’s response to antisemitism and student protests, told The Boston Globe that he is concerned about the ramifications of the funding cuts.
He said he fears it will “counterproductively promote antisemitism, as others in the community blame Jewish activists for the sanction. Indiscriminate funding cuts are the worst higher education policy step in decades,” Summers said.
Summers said he didn’t know enough about Khalil’s case but that “selective punishment of individuals based on speech the government authorities find noxious, absent violation of law, is antithetical to all our country’s traditions and deeply repugnant and offensive.”
He said he hopes it is reversed in the courts if that is what happened.
Jeffrey Flier, Harvard University professor and former dean, posted on X that the arrest “raises important concerns about free speech and due process,” reposting a letter from the free speech organization FIRE which requested the legal basis for arresting Khalil.
“Taking concerns about antisemitism at Columbia to a whole new level. Existential threat with a blunt instrument,” Flier said.
Kaia Dandelion, an active member leader for Jewish Voice for Peace Western Massachusetts, a Jewish left-leaning anti-Zionist advocacy organization, said they see the arrest of Khalil as an effort to silence pro-Palestine organizing across the country.
“I very much see the Trump administration not caring at all about Jewish safety but silencing this mass anti-war student movement for Palestinian freedom in a way that will silence all of us from being able to speak our minds and live into our values,” Dandelion said.
“I believe that calling anything and anybody pro-Hamas is a way to detract from the human rights violations that are being committed in an ongoing way by the Israeli military at this time,” Dandelion said.
Others had different thoughts, including Shabbos Kestenbaum, a former Harvard student who is suing the institution for failure to combat antisemitism.
He said it was “about time” for the presidential administration to hold protesters accountable.
“As a first generation American, I know that being in this country. It is a privilege. It’s not a right. And it’s a shame that this individual so obviously violated the terms of his green status. And he has really no one to blame but himself,” Kestenbaum said, who has been a vocal advocate in support of Trump.
“This really has nothing to do with speech. It has nothing to do with Jewish students. It has nothing to do with antisemitism. It has everything to do with simply following the law. And I don’t understand why there’s this Palestine exception that so long as you protest for Palestine, you could be immune from prosecution,” Kestenbaum said.
He added that he is glad that “public outrage” at Harvard has forced the institution to discipline its staff, including librarian Jonathan Tuttle who was filmed tearing down a poster at a rally on March 3 with photos of Israeli hostages, according to the Harvard Crimson.
“It’s a shame because there are lots of other incidents that aren’t recorded is not public outcry. So Harvard does not feel the need to take any action,” he said.
What happened to Mahmoud Khalil
On Saturday, federal immigration authorities arrested Khalil at his university-owned apartment and later flew him to an immigration jail in Louisiana, according to the Associated Press.
Khalil earned his master’s degree from Columbia’s school of international affairs last year.
He hasn’t been charged with any crime related to his activism. He is a permanent resident with a green card but Trump has hinted that Khalil’s actions would be cause for him to be deported.
Elora Mukherjee, the director of the immigrants’ rights clinic at Columbia Law School, told The New York Times that revoking a green card in response to public speech is “prohibited by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”
“We have not been able to get any more details about why he is being detained,” his attorney, Amy E. Greer, told the Associated Press on Sunday. “This is a clear escalation. The administration is following through on its threats.”
On Monday, a federal judge ordered that Khalil not be deported while the court considered a legal challenge brought by his lawyers. It is scheduled for Wednesday.
Federal agents attempted to take another international student at Columbia but weren’t allowed to enter her apartment, the outlet reported.
“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”
Smith College student organizer Hayward said Trump’s actions are " profoundly horrifying" but not surprising. As a Jewish student, she said it is particularly difficult to hear the arrest being done “in the name of Jewish so-called ‘safety.’”
Dalal-Whelan agreed.
“I think it just comes down to a question of humanity, every person in Gaza is a person, every student here that’s on a green card is also a person, and every U.S. citizen is also a person, and no one deserves to have their rights stripped from them,” said Dalal-Whelan. “Everyone deserves access to freedom and safety, and that’s what we’ve been fighting for, and that’s what we’ll continue to fight for.”
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