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Power & Pushback: ‘Nobody can protect you’ [1]
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Date: 2025-03-18 17:45:57+00:00
Last week Columbia University’s Interim President Katrina Armstrong sent an email to students and faculty saying she was “heartbroken” to learn that federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had showed up at two University residences.
“I understand the immense stress our community is under,” wrote Armstrong. “Despite the unprecedented challenges, Columbia University will remain a place where the pursuit of knowledge is cherished and fiercely protected, where the rule of law and due process is respected and never taken for granted, and where all members of our community are valued and able to thrive. These are the principles we uphold and that guide us every day.”
It might be difficult for the Columbia community to interpret Armstrong’s sentiments as genuine.
Before ICE agents showed up, the school modified its protocol for such a development and reversed its previous status as a sanctuary campus. According to the new rules, ICE would be allowed at Columbia without a warrant in “exigent circumstances.”
Not long after that announcement Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia graduate and lead organizer during last spring’s Gaza protests, was arrested by ICE in front of his pregnant wife, who pleaded with the agents to explain the charges.
Khalil was a permanent resident with a current green card, but it was revoked by the federal government along with his student visa. The Trump administration moved to have Khalil immediately deported, but the effort was blocked by a federal judge in New York. No one knew where Khalil was for an extended period of time, but we eventually learned that he is being held in a detention facility in Louisiana. At his first court hearing, we learned that his attorneys had not been able to communicate with him.
The Trump team immediately celebrated Khalil’s ordeal. “This is the first arrest of many to come,” wrote the president in a Truth Social post. “We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it. Many are not students, they are paid agitators.”
The administration has not accused Khalil of committing any sort of crime. Instead, they have basically implied that pro-Palestine protests impair the foreign policy objectives of the United States and that participants can be targeted as a result.
Court documents revealed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio wasn’t relying on anti-terrorism law when he chose to arrest Khalil, but a provision from the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which was wielded at the height of the Red Scare to target Holocaust survivors suspected of being Soviet agents.
“An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable,” reads that provision.
Last week two more Columbia students were targeted.
A DHS press release announced that Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman from the West Bank, was arrested by Newark, New Jersey ICE agents for allegedly overstaying her F-1 student visa. She is currently being held at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. Kordia reportedly participated in last spring’s Gaza protests.
Ranjani Srinivasan, an Indian national and Fulbright Scholar at Columbia, fled the U.S. over fears that she would be taken into custody. She’s been in the United States for nearly a decade. “Having my visa revoked and then losing my student status has upended my life and future — not because of any wrongdoing, but because I exercised my right to free speech,” she told CNN in a statement.
These certainly aren’t the only reasons that Armstrong’s email might have been met with some skepticism.
On the same day the campus heard about ICE showing up, we learned that Trump had sent Columbia’s administration a letter suggesting that the president might revisit his recent decision to cut $400 million to the school if it agreed to quell student protests in a specific set of ways. The White House’s multiple demands included suspension of the students involved in the Hamilton Hall occupation last April.
“We expect your immediate compliance,” read the letter.
In the case of the suspensions, it seems that Trump did immediately get Columbia’s compliance. Shortly after the New York Times reported on the letter, we learned that the school was issuing suspensions, expulsions, and temporary degree revocations to a number of students allegedly connected to the Hamilton Hall occupation.
This clampdown included the firing and expulsion of Grant Miner, President of UAW Local 2710, who was scheduled to begin contract negotiations with the school the next day.
“The shocking move is part of a wave of crackdowns on free speech against students and workers who have spoken out and protested for peace and against the war on Gaza,” said the union in a statement. “As the UAW has emphasized, the assault on First Amendment rights being jointly committed by the federal government and Columbia University are an attack on all workers who dare to protest, speak out, or exercise their freedom of association under the US Constitution.”
In a Twitter thread, Miner explained exactly what happened:
Thousands of students across the country have been exercising our First Amendment rights to oppose genocide. Standing against genocide is not just a moral imperative—it is an act of anti-racism and solidarity. Columbia’s response? Expulsions, suspensions, and retaliation. The Trump administration claims the student movement for Palestine is antisemitic and violent. They sent the DOJ to crack down on universities, kidnapped Mahmoud Khalil and other students, and are trying to silence us with fear. I am Jewish, I work in Jewish studies, and I am not alone in opposing the ongoing genocide. The Jewish people know what genocide is. That’s why so many of us, alongside people of all backgrounds, are standing up against what’s happening in Palestine. In its proudest moments, the labor movement has stood firmly on the side of the oppressed, and therefore on the side of justice. As president Student Workers of Columbia, I had an even greater responsibility to stand with my members who were beaten by the police just for protesting. Columbia has caved to Trump’s demands at every turn. They have brought the NYPD onto campus to brutalize students. Now, they’ve let DHS terrorize students in their own dorms. Our union is here to defend student workers, and we won’t stand for this blatant repression from Columbia and Trump. Firing and expelling me just before bargaining is a transparent attempt to dodge accountability for endangering students. At the same time, we are facing over $400 million in politically motivated cuts to vital research, all in the service of suppressing pro-Palestine protest. Both our local and the UAW will fight to get these cuts reversed and ensure our members can continue their work. The Trump admin crackdown has already failed. Last week, massive protests took place every single day. We are organizing. We are fighting back. This movement isn’t going anywhere. Release Mahmoud Khalil! Reinstate all students and workers. And as always, #FreePalestine
These developments should not have been surprising to anyone who has followed the situation at Columbia over the past year. Unfortunately, the detention of students should not have been shocking either, as Trump was promising such action before he even won the election.
After Khalil’s arrest adjunct professor Stuart Karle instructed students to refrain from posting about Palestine. “If you have a social media page, make sure it is not filled with commentary on the Middle East,” he told them.
When a Palestinian student objected to the idea of Columbia promoting censorship and cowering to the Trump administration, the journalism school’s dean, Jelani Cobb, was even more direct.
“Nobody can protect you,” Cobb told the student. “These are dangerous times.”
There are at least a few big picture stories developing rapidly here.
One is the ongoing attacks on the U.S. Palestine movement, which have been amped up in recent years whether through anti-BDS laws or efforts to equate antisemitism with anti-Zionism. Another is the wider issue of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, which are certainly not limited to Palestinians or student protesters.
However, we also have to confront higher education in the United States. What is its role in 2025? What kind of responsibilities does it have to its students, its faculty, or society at large? Columbia is a private institution, which means that it’s not technically bound by the First Amendment, but is it committed to First Amendment principles in any capacity?
Last October, I spoke with Maura Finkelstein, who was the first tenured professor to be fired over a pro-Palestine speech.
She told me that the neoliberal university model has undoubtedly contributed to such repression.
“I think this is the worst-case scenario of what we’ve been seeing for decades: a rolling back of federal funding for higher education, which has been replaced with a donor model,” she explained. “This is what happens when schools become a marketplace and not a space for education. In some ways, I don’t think we should be surprised.”
Zooming Out
Much of the recent focus has understandably been on Columbia, but it’s certainly not an isolated incident.
This month Helyeh Doutaghi, a scholar of international law and geopolitical economy at Yale Law School, was placed on administrative leave following an AI-generated article falsely accusing her of “terrorist” connections.
“What is clear is that YLS actions constitute a blatant act of retaliation against Palestinian solidarity—a violation of my constitutional rights, free speech, academic freedom, and fundamental due process rights,” said Doutaghi. “I am being targeted for one reason alone: for speaking the truth about the genocide of the Palestinian people that Yale University is complicit in.”
I asked Doutaghi’s attorney, Eric Lee, what he thought about the actions of Columbia, Yale, and other schools bending the knee to Trump on this issue.
“Future historians will treat the role of the American universities as an example of collaborationism, like we view the Vichy government today,” he told me. “The role played by the vast majority of professors is absolutely shameful.”
“People with and without tenure are afraid to speak up because they are worried about their own salaries,” he continued. “Professors and graduate students who are not speaking out publicly and loudly are actively facilitating Trump’s effort to overthrow the constitution and establish a dictatorship. It is not too late to speak up.”
Sadly, examples of this “collaborationism” can be seen all over.
Swarthmore College has suspended a student for their involvement in the Gaza protests last year. They are just one of 25 who have been charged with violations of the Code of Conduct over their involvement in the protests.
The student, a second semester senior two months away from graduation, was charged with assault for the use of a bullhorn indoors, the first suspension of its kind nationally. The school also recently banned the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
In an Instagram post, the group Swarthmore College Alumni for Palestine said: “The sanctioned students are predominantly students of color and first-generation, low-income students, with the most severe sanctions issued to Arab and Muslim students.”
“Swarthmore issued sanctions against student protestors just days after Trump threatened student protestors with incarceration and deportation,” it continues. “ In this moment of increasing political repression nationwide — including the recent ICE abduction of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, it is extremely disturbing that Swarthmore College would align itself with the Trump administration in its crackdown of student protestors.”
Finally, a Cornell professor and two graduate students are suing the Trump administration over its push to deport student protesters.
One of the plaintiffs, Momodou Taal, was suspended for participating in a pro-Palestine protest last year and was nearly deported over it.
“Today, on the advice of counsel, we have sought a national injunction against Trump’s executive orders. This is because we cannot allow international students, faculty, immigrants and people with conscience to live in perpetual fear, with the threat of illegal detention hanging over our heads,” said Taal in a statement.
Mahmoud Khalil and 7 current Columbia students are suing the school and Representative Tim Walberg (R-MI) to prevent private disciplinary records from being handed over to the House Committee on Education and Workforce. The committee has repeatedly targeted schools over pro-Palestine protests, claiming that the universities are failing to stand up to antisemitism.
The lawsuit states that the private information could be used to target students “whose personal privacy and safety would be jeopardized by the committee’s politically charged investigation.”
It calls the request a “naked attempt to attack and harass individuals who expressed viewpoints critical of Israel.”
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https://mondoweiss.net/2025/03/power-pushback-nobody-can-protect-you/
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