In this case6:29Arrest of Columbia Student Proter sends Chill on the campus, says teacher
The arrest and threatened deportation of a student activist at Columbia University are a threat to freedom of expression on the campus and through the United States, said Professor Michael Thaddeus.
“It’s a very dark day in the history of the Republic, when someone can be imprisoned just for exercising their constitutional rights,” said math teacher in Columbia In this case Nile Koksal host.
“And that seems to be a clear case of that.”
Thaddeus is one of the many members of the faculty of the New York school who are expressed on behalf of Mahmoud Khalil, which was arrested by immigration and customs agents (ICE) For its role in campus demonstrations against the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.
Khalil, a permanent American resident, was arrested without indictment in his apartment belonging to the university on Saturday in front of his pregnant wife, and sent to a detention center in Louisiana.
The arrest was triggered by a decree, signed by American president Donald Trump, promising to fight against what he described as anti-Semitism on the campus and to deport pro-Palestinian student demonstrators, which he called “Hamas sympathizers”.
What happened?
Khalil, of Palestinian origin, came to the United States on a student visa in 2022 and became a permanent resident last year.
According to legal files, he obtained a master’s degree in public administration in December 2024 and was expected to graduate in May.
He was an eminent member and negotiating the Columbia protest movement against the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.
Trump allegedly allegedly on social networks that Khalil supported the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which activist’s lawyers vehemently denied.
When Khalil was arrested for the first time, the police threatened to revoke his student visa and expel him, said his lawyers. When he corrected them that he actually had a green card, they said they would revoke this instead.
A federal judge temporarily blocked the expulsion of Khalil while his lawyers dispute the constitutionality of his arrest.
During the first hearing of Khalil in New York on Wednesday, the American district judge Jesse Furman judged that the activist should be authorized for private telephone calls with his lawyers.
One of Khalil’s lawyers, Ramzi Kassem, said that his client had only received one call with his legal team from immigration detention in Louisiana, that she was on a line recorded and monitored by the government, and was cut prematurely.
Brandon Waterman, government lawyer, said he had not been aware of any problem with Khalil’s access to his lawyers but that he would examine it.
The scene outside the courtroom was tense while hundreds of demonstrators gathered, holding signs indicating “freeing Mahmoud Khalil” and singing “Down, Down with Export, Up, Up With Liberation”.
Columbia financing cuts
Meanwhile, back on campus, representatives of the Columbia section of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) met the acting president of Katrina Armstrong University.
Thaddeus – Who is the vice -president of the Columbia chapter – says that he and his colleagues pressed Armstrong to support Khalil, in vain.
“The university administration was remarkably silent with regard to this arrest,” he said.
Reason, he suspects, has to do with money. Already, the Trump administration has suspended US $ 400 million in federal subsidies and contracts with Columbia for allegations of antisimism linked to pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the campus.
Thaddeus described the cuts and the arrest a “two -component attack” by the Trump administration against Columbia.
“The federal government has a lot of leverage on us,” said Thaddeus.
However, he urged the administration, the teachers and the students to express themselves.
“This lever effect will be exercised on us, no matter what we do, or no matter what we say,” he said. “So we could as well, you know, and have the courage of our convictions.”
Columbia University has not responded to several requests for CBC comments.
Other teachers and their representatives have also spoken against the arrest of Khalil and the financing cuts, who, according to them, cause a cooling of freedom of expression and academic freedom.
Reinhold Martin, President of the Chapumbia chapter of AAUP, said in a statement that the financing cuts had nothing to do with anti -Semitism, and everything to do with “the crushing of the dissent and privatize the government supported by the government”.
The AAUP called for the immediate release of Khalil.
The English teacher Marianne Hirsch, the child of the Holocaust survivors who grew up in Romania, said that Khalil’s arrest had brought her “the most tormented childhood nightmares”.
“The illegal detention and the threatened deportation of a student, who is a green card holder, has made everyone dangerous here,” said Hirsch Said at a press conference on Monday.
“ Mahmoud is my rock ”, says the woman
The wife of Mahmoud, an eight -month pregnant American citizen, published a statement through her husband’s lawyers. They did not disclose his name.
“Mahmoud is my rock, it is my house and it is my happy place,” said the declaration.
“For all those who read this, I urge you to see Mahmoud through my eyes like a loving husband and the future father to our baby. I need your help to bring Mahmoud back home, so he is there next to me, holding my hand in the delivery room while we welcome our first child in this world. Please release Mahmoud now.”
