As it happens6:29The arrest of a student protester Columbia sends a cold in the campus, says prof
The arrest and endangered deportation of a student activist at Columbia University is a threat to free speech at campus and across the US, says Professor Michael Thaddeus.
“It is a very dark day in the history of the Republic, when one can only be closed for the exercise of their constitutional rights,” said Mathematics Professor Columbia As it happens Host Nil Koksal.
“And it seems to be a growing case of it.”
Thaddeus is one of several faculties members at the New York School who spoke on behalf of Mahmoud Khalil, arrested by an immigration agent and customs implementation (ICE) for his role in campus protests against the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.
Khalil, a permanent resident of the United States, was arrested without charges in his apartment owned by the University on Saturday in front of his pregnant wife and sent to a detention center in Louisiani.
The arrest was encouraged by the executive command, signed by US President Donald Trump, promising to fight what he characterized as anti-Semitism on campus and deportation of pro-Palestinian student protesters, which marked “Hamas sympathizers.”
What happened?
Khalil, who from Palestinian origin, came to the US for a 2022 student visa and became a permanent resident last year.
According to the court sub -ceremony, he received his master’s degree in the Public Administration in December 2024 and was supposed to graduate in May.
He was a prominent member and negotiator for Columbia’s protest movement against the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.
Trump, on social media, claimed without evidence, that Khalil supported the Palestinian militant group of Hamas, something that the lawyers of activists had fiercely denied.
When Khalil was first arrested, the officers threatened to revoke his student visa and deport him, his lawyers said. When he corrected them that, in fact, he had a green card, they said he would recall it instead.
The federal judge temporarily blocked Khalil’s deportation on Monday, while his lawyers challenge the constitutionality of his arrest.
During the first court hearing in Khalil, New York on Wednesday, US District Judge Jesse Furman ruled that an activist must be allowed to private phone calls with his lawyers.
One of Khalil’s lawyers, Ramzi Kassem, said his client was allowed only one call with his legal team from the immigration detention in Louisiana, that she had recorded and monitored the government on the line, and was too early.
Brandon Waterman, a government lawyer, said he was not aware of any problems with Khalil’s approach to his lawyers, but that he would consider him.
The scene in front of the courtroom was tense as hundreds of protesters gathered, holding the signs they read “Release Mahmoud Khalil” and sing “down, down with the deportation, up, up with release.”
Reducing Columbia funding
Meanwhile, back to campus, representatives of Columbia American Association of University Professors (AAUP) met with the temporary President of the University of Katrin Armstrong.
Thaddeus-Koji is Vice President of the Columbia Chapter-say that he and his colleagues pressed Armstrong to support Khali.
“The university administration has been silent on the issue of this arrest,” he said.
The reason, doubt, has to do with money. The Trump’s administration has already suspended $ 400 million in Federal Scholarships and Columbia Federal Scholarships on charges of anti-Seminism related to Pro-Palestinian Campus protests.
Thaddeus called the cuts and arrest “double -sided attack” Trump administration against Columbia.
“The federal government has a lot of influence over us,” Thaddeus said.
Still, he invited the administration, members of the faculty and students to talk.
“This impact will be done no matter what we do, or no matter what we say,” he said. “So, we could, you know, get up and have the courage of our beliefs.”
Columbia University did not respond to multiple CBCs for comment.
Other professors and their representatives also declared themselves against Khalil’s arrest and a decrease in funds, which they say cause cold on free speech and academic freedom.
Reinhold Martin, president of the AAUP Columbia chapter, said in a statement that reduction of funds had nothing to do with anti -Semitism, and all the relationships with “the demolition of disagreement and privatization of the Government supported the research.”
Aaup invited Khalil’s current release.
The English language professor Marianne Hirsch, a child of the Holocaust survivors who grew up in Romania, said Khalil’s arrest had returned her “the least painful nightmare of childhood”.
“Illegal custody and a threatening deportation of a student, who owns the green ticket, have done everything here insecure,” Hirsch said at a press conference on Monday.
‘Mahmoud is my rock,’ says wife
Mahmoud’s wife, an American citizen who has been a pregnant eight months, announced a statement through her husband’s lawyer. They did not discover her name.
“Mahmoud is my rock, he is my home and he is my happy place,” the statement said.
“For all who read this, I invite you to look through my eyes as a loving husband and a future father to our child. I need your help to bring Mahmoud home so that he is here next to me, holding his hand to the birth room while welcome to our first child to this world. Please let Mahmoud now.”
