The arrest of the Columbia Protestant tester is studying campus, says the faculty

The arrest and the endangered deportation of a student activist at Columbia University are a threat to freedom of speech on campus and in the USA, says Professor Michael Thaddeus.

“It is a very dark day in the history of the republic if someone can be detained just to exercise their constitutional rights” How it happens Host Nil Koksal.

“And it seems to be a naked clear case.”

Thaddeus is one of several faculty members at the New York School, which is in the name of Mahmoud Khalil, Who was arrested by ICE agents of the immigration and customs authority (ICE) Military campaign protested for his role in campus in Gaza.

Khalil, a constant American resident, was arrested on Saturday before his pregnant wife without charges in his apartment at the university and sent to a detention center in Louisiana.

The arrest was triggered by an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump, who promised to fight what he characterized as anti-Semitism on campus and deported propalestinic student demonstrators, which he described as “Hamas sympathizers”.

What happened?

Khalil, who is of Palestinian origin, came to the USA with a student visa in 2022 and was constantly resident last year.

According to court files, he completed a master’s degree in public administration in December 2024 and should graduate in May.

He was a prominent member and negotiator for the Columbia protest movement against the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.

Trump claimed on social media without evidence that Khalil had supported the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which the activist’s lawyers vehemently denied.

When Khalil was arrested for the first time, the officials threatened to revoke his student visa and deport him, his lawyers said. When he corrected them that he actually had a green card, they said they were revoked instead.

A federal judge temporarily blocked Khalil’s deportation on Monday, while his lawyers question the constitutionality of his arrest.

During the first trial of Khalil in New York City on Wednesday, the US district judge Jesse Furman decided that the activist must be allowed private calls with his lawyers.

One of Khalil’s lawyers, Ramzi Kassem, said that his client had only allowed one call with his legal team from immigration authorities in Louisiana that he stood in a line listed and monitored by the government and was cut off prematurely.

Brandon Waterman, a government lawyer, said that he had no problems with Khalil’s access to his lawyers, but would examine it.

The scene outside the courtroom was tense when hundreds of demonstrators gathered, with the signs “Release Mahmoud Khalil” and singing down “, with deportation, above, with liberation”.

Financing cuts to Columbia

On the campus, representatives of the Columbia Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) met with the interim president of the university, Katrina Armstrong, with the interim president of the university.

Thaddeus-the Vice President of the Columbia chapter is said to be, he and his colleagues pressed Armstrong to support Khalil without success.

“The university administration has remarkably silent about this arrest,” he said.

The reason, he suspects, has to do with money. The Trump government has already suspended $ 400 million in federal granting and contracts on Columbia for accusations of anti-Seminism associated with pro-Palestinian protests on the campus.

Thaddeus called the cuts and the arrest a “two-track attack” of the Trump government against Columbia.

“The federal government has a lot of influence on us,” said Thaddeus.

Nevertheless, he asked the administration, the faculty members and the students to comment.

“This leverage is exercised on us, no matter what we do or no matter what we say,” he said. “So we could just as well, you know, get up and have the courage of our beliefs.”

Columbia University did not respond to several CBC requests for comments.

Other professors and their representatives have also shown themselves against Khalil’s arrest and the funding cuts, both of whom say that they cause relaxation of freedom of speech and academic freedom.

Reinhold Martin, President of the Columbia chapter of the Aaup, said in a statement that the funding cuts had nothing to do with anti -Semitism and everything that has to do with “crushing and privatizing government”.

The eaup demanded Khalils immediate publication.

The English professor Marianne Hirsch, who grew up in Romania from Holocaust -said that Khalil’s arrest had brought her “most tormenting nightmares from childhood”.

“The illegal detention and the endangered deportation of a student who is a Green Card holder made everyone unsafe”, Hirsch said on Monday at a press conference.

“Mahmoud is my rock,” says Ms.

Mahmoud’s wife, a US citizen who is eight months pregnant, published an explanation by her husband’s lawyers. You have not disclosed your name.

“Mahmoud is my rock, he is my home and he is my happy place,” says the explanation.

“For everyone who read this, I ask you to see Mahmoud as a loving husband and as the future father of our baby through his eyes. I need your help to bring Mahmoud home, so he is here and holds my hand in the pine room while we welcome our first child into this world now.”