Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of pro-Palestinian protests in the US during the Gaza war, went back to Columbia University on Tuesday for the first time since he was arrested in 2025 as part of President Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian activists.
The 31-year-old man told AFP that the fact that about 100 people showed up to an event about his new book was a “victory” because he said Columbia was trying “to erase me, to erase any Palestinian voices on campus.”
He has criticised the Ivy League school for how it handled the student protests in 2024, including letting the NYPD clear protesters from its Manhattan campus in a rough operation. At the time, Columbia said the protests were dangerous.
Khalil also said that the university didn’t do enough to protect him from harassment before he was arrested by US immigration officials and held without charges for three months before he was freed in June 2025. Columbia could have shown how to have tough conversations on campus, how to handle this kind of protest, and how to follow human rights and international law,” Khalil told AFP in an interview.
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