NEW YORK: Mahmoud Khalil, a figurehead of Gaza war protests in the United States, returned Tuesday to Columbia University for the first time since his 2025 arrest under President Donald Trump\u2019s crackdown on pro-Palestinian activists.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old told AFP his presence for an event on his new memoir, attended by around 100 people, was a \u201cvictory,\u201d as he accused Columbia of seeking \u201cto erase me, to erase any Palestinian voices on campus.\u201d<\/p>\n
He has slammed the Ivy League institution for its response to the 2024 student demonstrations, which included allowing New York police to clear protesters from its Manhattan campus in a heavy-handed operation.<\/p>\n
Columbia said at the time the protests were a safety threat.<\/p>\n
Khalil has also accused the university of failing to protect him from harassment ahead of his arrest by US immigration authorities and three-month detention without criminal charge, before his release in June 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cColumbia could have been an example for how to have difficult conversations on campus, how to respond to such a protest, how to be aligned with human rights and with international law,\u201d Khalil told AFP in an interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey chose the total opposite. They chose brutality. They chose repression,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Some Jewish groups on social media had opposed Khalil\u2019s return. A spokesperson for Columbia said the college is \u201ccommitted to rigorous debate, inquiry, and respectful dialogue across differing perspectives.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cColumbia supports the right of faculty members to organize academic events. An invitation to speak does not signify university endorsement of a speaker\u2019s views,\u201d they said in a statement carried by US media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW YORK: Mahmoud Khalil, a figurehead of Gaza war protests in the United States, returned Tuesday to Columbia University for the first time since his 2025 arrest under President Donald Trump\u2019s crackdown on pro-Palestinian activists. The 31-year-old told AFP his presence for an event on his new memoir, attended by around 100 people, was a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":105010,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104996"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105011,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104996\/revisions\/105011"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}