Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil is undoubtedly being targeted for his role in the campus encampment that galvanized a worldwide student movement responding to the Palestinian call to end complicity in Israel’s regime of genocide and apartheid.
Khalil, a Palestinian refugee and US permanent resident “Green Card” holder, participated in negotiations with the Columbia administration calling on the university to end ties with complicit companies and institutions.
Khalil’s abduction and detention are part of the oligarch-driven, authoritarian Trump administration’s pledge to deport international students who have been demanding that their universities live up to their own stated values by ending all ties with apartheid Israel, as was done with apartheid South Africa.
Khalil’s detention is also the continuation and severe escalation of the unconstitutional, McCarthyite bipartisan crackdown of previous US governments on students and academics supporting Palestinian rights through meaningful, principled and strategic calls for accountability and ending complicity in Israel’s atrocity crimes.
Columbia itself played a major role in fueling the repressive environment, calling in local police forces, who violently cleared the peaceful student encampment last spring, and in suspending students. The day before he was abducted from his home, Khalil contacted Columbia asking for support in the face of death threats, calls for deportation, and harassment.
Just days after Khalil’s abduction, Columbia continued its crackdown, announcing it had “sanctioned” students involved in last year’s encampment with "multi-year suspensions, temporary degree revocation and expulsions." It is not the students calling for accountability over Israel’s war crimes who should be sanctioned, but Columbia University itself. We firmly condemn Columbia and all universities that maintain complicit academic and financial relations with genocidal Israel and that repress students and faculty, paving the way for Trump’s authoritarian crackdown. We support calls for censuring Columbia University.
As the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, including the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), we are deeply inspired by the immediate mobilizations for Khalil’s freedom by civil rights organizations, immigrant rights movements, students and academics, standing up for his right to advocate for his people’s justice, equality, and liberation through accountability measures.
Sign the petition for Mahmoud Khalil's Release
This is exactly what is needed in this moment. As the Trump administration goes after progressive movements advocating for racial equality, migrants’ rights, women’s rights, Indigenous rights, LGTBQIA+ rights, climate justice, and workers’ rights, we must fiercely defend the right to advocate for justice for all. Broad-tent, intersectional coalitions against fascism, white supremacy, McCarthyism, colonial oppression, and unprecedented authoritarianism are needed now more than ever.
Heavily funded during his election drive by Israel lobby groups, Trump is doing Israel’s repressive bidding by cracking down on Palestinian rights supporters. It’s a desperate attempt to stall the flood of academic boycott and divestment measures being implemented, committed to or advocated for on university campuses across the US and around the world.
Dozens of universities, following student and faculty mobilizations, have taken steps to end their complicity in Israel’s crimes against Palestinians, including the Columbia-affiliated Union Theological Seminary, whose Board of Trustees endorsed divestment from companies profiting Israel’s Gaza genocide.
As we fight for Khalil’s immediate release and against the repressive measures of the Trump administration, we must also commit to continue the work Khalil and tens of thousands of students, academics and staff are doing around the world to get Israeli apartheid off campus and out of academia. We also call for effective action, including censure, against universities such as Columbia that are not only complicit in Israeli crimes but also cooperate with the repressive authorities in the arrest and deportation of students over their expressions.
Freedom for Mahmoud Khalil. They Repress, We BDS.
Check out the student solidarity and academic boycott pages on the BDS movement’s website for ideas on how to rid your campus of complicity in Israeli apartheid.