FORUM: Mahmoud Khalil Controversy and Global Implications (April 17, 2025) by Gabrielle Park
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched the deadliest terrorist attack in Israeli history. Around 1,200 civilians died that night, and about 3,300 others were injured. Another 250 people were taken hostage to the Gaza Strip. Hamas justified their attack by speaking of Israel taking over Palestinian territories. Soon after this attack, on October 12, 2023, hundreds of students at Columbia University gathered for their first protest against Israel, expressing "full solidarity with Palestinian resistance against over 75 years of Israeli settler-colonialism and apartheid.”
Recently, Mahmoud Khalil, a notable figure during the Gaza war protests at Columbia University, has drawn global attention after the Trump administration arrested and attempted to deport him. Khalil immigrated to the U.S. in 2022, on a student visa to attend SIPA (School of Public Affairs). In 2023, he married Noor Abdalla, a U.S. citizen and dentist. Soon after, Khalil received his green card in 2024. Mahmoud Khalil was highly involved with activism in solidarity with Palestine. In a 2024 CNN interview, Khalil said, "As a Palestinian student, I believe that the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand by hand, and you cannot achieve one without the other." He said he sees the movement as one "for social justice and freedom and equality for everyone.”
On April 17, 2025, the Heterodox East Asia Community (HEAC), part of Heterodox Academy, sponsored an online public forum on the Mahmoud Khalil controversy featuring Shai Davidai, assistant professor of business at Columbia Business School, University of Pennsylvania historian Jonathan Zimmerman, and Joseph Yi, associate professor of political science at Hanyang University.
Known for his advocacy for Israel, Shai Davidai (Israeli citizen) has spoken against Mahmoud Khalil and the 2024 Columbia University pro-Palestinian campus occupations repeatedly, appearing on Youtube at least four times. Khalil claims that Shai Davidai called for his deportation. On March 6, 2025 Shai Davidai had posted on X tagging Marco Rubio, the United States Secretary of State. Davidai said that he wanted to see “strong action,” writing, “Illegally taking over a college in which you are not even enrolled and distributing terrorist propaganda should be a deportable offense, no? Because that’s what Mahmoud Khalil from @ColumbiaSJP did yesterday at @BarnardCollege.” On March 9, 2025, Marco Rubio replied on X, “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cars of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.” He also shared a link to an article about Khalil's arrest.
On March 8, 2025, Khalil was detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. A man dressed in plain clothes approached Khalil at his Columbia apartment, claiming that he was with the police. Soon, more officers arrived. Khalil’s wife told the officers that he was a permanent resident. “‘This guy has a green card,’” she heard the officer say on his phone. “And then the guy on the phone with him told him, ‘Let’s bring him in anyway.’”
At the forum, Davidai said that he considers the debate over Khalil as a “made-up controversy by politicians and the media who are using Mahmoud Khalil as a pawn. It's not for nothing that within 72 hours of being arrested he had 19 lawyers and $350,000 in donations. These are bigger organizations that are using this guy.” Shai Davidai believes that global anti-Israeli organizations funded by Iran and others are behind Mahmoud Khalil, using him as a pawn. He also stated that debate isn’t about free speech, but is about breaking the conditions of his green card. “It's about his leading an organization that repeatedly took over university buildings, hospitalized multiple university staff, and handed out Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, propaganda repeatedly, and multiple other things.”
On the contrary, Jonathan Zimmerman has written that as a believer of free speech, “Khalil’s opinions — and how other people reacted to them — shouldn’t matter,” regardless of whether Khalil was “pro Hamas” and made students feel “unsafe.” He states that though it is illegal to provide Hamas with material support, it is not illegal to like Hamas. “In America, we don’t penalize people for their ideas.” During the forum Zimmerman said that as an American, people have the right to say “despicable” things.
At the forum, Joseph Yi talked about the implications for East Asia. Many critics of academic freedom and speech in East Asia find validation from Western democracies. “Freedom anywhere encourages freedom everywhere. Restriction anywhere encourages restrictions everywhere.” People find validation from similar actions in advanced democracies. For example, after teacher Song was fired for questioning the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, China’s Global Times reminded readers that German and US governments acted similarly. They pointed out that in Germany, serious cases of publicly questioning the facts of the Holocaust can lead to jail. In the US, a teacher trampled on a US flag during class on free speech. She was fired when the school board made a unanimous decision.
Professor Yi also spoke about a personal experience. “In 2021, I co-authored an essay calling for more open debate on historical issues—for debating, not censuring, Harvard Law Professor Mark Ramseyer, who wrote a provocative thesis that most Korean comfort women signed contracts with advanced payments.” Afterward, an old (2019) recording of Professor Yi’s class lecture was selectively edited and published, making it appear as if he said that Korean historians are “a bunch of nationalist liars.” In reality, however, the full recording was actually of someone else (former Seoul National Professor Lee Yong-hoon, author of the best seller Anti-Japan Tribalism) calling Korean historians liars.
Gabrielle Park, an 8th grade student speaker (Oxford Academy, CA), said, “Unless the government provides evidence against Khalil, he should not be getting deported from a country that values free speech.” Khalil is going through removal procedures because of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which permits deportation of legal residents, if the Secretary of State believes their presence risks "potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” However, Parksaid, “this law is too arbitrary. I believe that the Congress should repeal this law for being unconstitutional. It violates the 1st amendment rights to speech and association, and the 5th amendment right of due process, for all individuals.”
After attending the forum, Peter R. McCullough, an astronomer, wrote the next day that he believes the Trump administration is trying to sidestep due process, such as hearings and legal representation, in order to deport millions of undocumented immigrants in a few years. He added that, “I suppose [the Trump administration] thinks it can win either way: either SCOTUS grants it some emergency power to detain and deport without due process or SCOTUS tells it to behave as we expect from the US constitution and grant each person due process.”
On April 21, Mahmoud Khalil’s son was born. Khalil’s request to attend his son’s birth, however, was denied by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Currently, he is being detained at Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, Louisiana. Khalil had hoped to walk free on June 13, but a federal judge denied his request. After ICE agents arrested him in New York in March, they charged Khalil of committing fraud on his 2024 green card application. Government lawyers wrote, "Khalil is now detained based on that other charge of removability. Detaining Khalil based on that other ground of removal is lawful."
However, Mahmoud Khalil was released from a federal immigration detention on June 20, 2025, after spending more than three months detained by the Trump administration. Khalil’s lawyers protested his detention as unconstitutional retaliation for free speech and denied the charges of antisemitism. Judge Michael Farbiarz agreed, saying, “There is at least something to the underlying claim that there is an effort to use immigration proceedings here to punish the petitioner here, and of course that would be unconstitutional [violation of Khalil’s First Amendment rights].”
Upon arrival, Khalil was surrounded by his family, reporters, lawyers, and around 50 supporters. “I just want to go back and just continue the work that I was already doing, advocating for Palestinian rights – speech that should actually be celebrated rather than punished, as this administration wants to do,” Khalil said on June 21 at a press conference at Newark Liberty International Airport. However, Mahmoud Khalil’s immigration case on whether he should be deported is still ongoing. (His next trial date is not publicly available at this time.)
Gabrielle Park is a rising 9th grader at Oxford Academy.
References
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