Latest news with #ColumbiaSpectator
Roya News
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Roya News
Maggie Gyllenhaal's daughter arrested during pro-Palestine protest at Columbia
The daughter of Hollywood actors Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard was among several students arrested during a pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia University. Eighteen-year-old Ramona Sarsgaard, a Columbia freshman, was taken into custody during Wednesday's protest and charged with criminal trespassing, according to a New York Post report citing informed sources. Sarsgaard's arrest came as students took over part of Butler Library, transforming it into what they called the "Basel al-Araj People's University"—named after a Palestinian activist. Demonstrators unfurled banners, handed out flyers calling for divestment from companies linked to the Israeli Occupation's genocide efforts, and chanted, 'We have nothing to lose but our chains!' University officials called the police, which resulted in several arrests. Columbia's acting president, Claire Shipman, responded with a statement emphasizing that 'disruptions to our academic activities will not be tolerated,' especially as students approach final exams. Meanwhile, protest organizers criticized what they described as an aggressive crackdown: 'We are facing one of the largest militarized police forces in the world. Deputized public safety officers have choked and beaten us, but we have not wavered … We will not be useless intellectuals. Palestine is our compass, and we stand strong in the face of violent repression.' Adding to the controversy, four student journalists—covering the protest for Columbia Spectator and campus radio station WKCR—were temporarily suspended by Columbia and its affiliate Barnard College. The students reportedly identified themselves as the press but were still sanctioned under claims of participating in the occupation. According to Columbia Spectator, suspensions were issued via email by university rules administrator Gregory Wawro and Barnard Dean Leslie Grinage, who wrote that their alleged actions 'pose an ongoing threat of disruption.' One of the suspensions was lifted within five hours. The remaining three were reversed by Friday morning. These events come amid heightened scrutiny of campus activism across the US, as federal authorities continue to target student protesters. Among those impacted is Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi, recently released after detention, while graduate Mahmoud Khalil remains in ICE custody in Louisiana.
NZ Herald
01-05-2025
- Politics
- NZ Herald
US judge orders release of Columbia student arrested by immigration officers
Judge Crawford likened the current climate to the McCarthy era of the 1950s and the Red Scare around the end of World War I. 'The wheel of history has come round again, but as before, these times of excess will pass,' he wrote. Judge Crawford, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama, ordered Mahdawi released on bond while his federal habeas corpus petition and his immigration proceeding continue. Outside the courthouse, there was exultation as Mahdawi addressed hundreds of supporters while wearing a suit with a kaffiyeh, a symbol of the Palestinian cause, draped around his shoulders. 'I am saying it clear and loud to President Trump and his Cabinet: I am not afraid of you,' Mahdawi said. 'Never give up on the idea that justice will prevail.' Since April 14, Mahdawi had been held in a prison north of Burlington. The Trump administration is seeking to deport him using an obscure provision of immigration law that allows the removal of a person whose presence is deemed to undermine US foreign policy. The Government has not accused Mahdawi of a crime. Mahdawi's lawyers say federal agents gave him a notice from the Department of Homeland Security with a form attached accusing him of engaging in 'anti-Semitic conduct through leading pro-Palestinian protests and calling for Israel's destruction'. A memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio alleges Mahdawi engaged in 'threatening rhetoric and intimidation of pro-Israeli bystanders', something his lawyers deny. Mahdawi organised and spoke at campus protests but stepped back from activism at Columbia in March 2024, his lawyers said in a court filing. Mahdawi's supporters also noted that at a protest in 2023, he forcefully denounced a person making anti-Semitic remarks, an interaction described by the Columbia Spectator. Since last fall, Mahdawi has met weekly with a group of Israeli students at Columbia to discuss a peaceful resolution to the conflict. This month, more than 200 Israelis living in the US signed an open letter condemning his arrest. After Mahdawi arrived for his naturalisation interview at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Vermont on April 14, he was taken into custody by masked agents. The same day, agents drove him to the airport in Burlington with the goal of flying him to Louisiana, his lawyers said. Several other international students involved in pro-Palestinian campus activism, including Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, have been sent to detention centres in that state. Mahdawi missed the flight by nine minutes, he told a crowd outside the courthouse. Around the same time, a Vermont judge issued an order telling the Government not to remove him from the state in response to an emergency motion filed by Mahdawi's lawyers. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs for the Department of Homeland Security, did not respond to a question about where the agents were taking Mahdawi. 'The Trump Administration is committed to restoring the rule of law to our immigration system,' McLaughlin said in a statement Thursday. 'No lawsuit, not this one or any other, is going to stop us from doing that.' A State Department spokesperson previously declined to comment on ongoing litigation. Prosecutors indicated they will appeal Crawford's order. At Thursday's hearing inside a packed courtroom, Crawford said the Government had failed to show that Mahdawi was a danger to the community or a flight risk. Prosecutors submitted a police report from 2015 alleging Mahdawi had made inflammatory comments; the FBI investigated and took no further action. In a sworn statement, Mahdawi denied making the comments. His lawyer called them 'cartoonishly racist hearsay'. Crawford pointed to the more than 125 letters submitted on Mahdawi's behalf by neighbours, professors and friends, many of them Jewish, attesting to his 'commitment to principles of nonviolence'. Mahdawi, who was born in a refugee camp in the West Bank, met and married an American woman who studied medicine at Dartmouth College. He received his green card in 2015 and the couple later divorced. He became a practising Buddhist. At Columbia, he majored in philosophy and was set to graduate next month. Inside the courtroom, Mahdawi embraced his lawyers after the judge announced his order. Within minutes, Mahdawi was outside under a sunny sky addressing the crowd. He gathered with others in a circle, their arms around one another, and sang We Shall Overcome.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Judge to rule on Mahmoud Khalil detention case Friday
Detained Columbia grad student Mahmoud Khalil could be released as soon as Friday, based on a timeline set by an immigration judge in Louisiana. Judge Jamee Comans on Tuesday ordered President Trump's administration to turn over any evidence supporting Khalil's continued detention by Wednesday. Comans said if the evidence doesn't support Khalil's deportation, she would 'terminate the case on Friday.' Khalil, 30, was detained March 8 at his Manhattan apartment, part of a series of arrests of foreign-born students involved in pro-Palestine protests. Khalil, like the other students, was in the U.S. legally. 'We will not forget those who have orchestrated this injustice, the government officials and university administrators who have targeted you without cause, without any shred of evidence to justify their actions,' Khalil's wife, Noor Abdalla, wrote in an open letter. The feds scooped up Khalil and the other students on a rarely used provision that gives the secretary of state power to deport noncitizen residents who pose 'potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.' Government attorneys have claimed pro-Palestine rallies meet those criteria. However, none of the students have yet to be deported, as they're subject to high-profile court fights. Khalil is potentially facing two court cases: one in Louisiana where he's detained at an immigration jail, and one in New Jersey where his lawyers petitioned for his release. 'We believe that it is the highest honor of our lives to struggle for the cause of Palestinian liberation,' Khalil wrote in an opinion piece published Friday in the Columbia Spectator. 'History will redeem us, while those who were content to wait on the sidelines will be forever remembered for their silence.' With News Wire Services
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Mahmoud Khalil Rebukes Columbia For Targeting Dissent With 'Repression Playbook'
Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil rebuked what he called the school's 'repression playbook' that has opened the gates for higher education and the federal government to target dissent on campus and abduct students like him for their pro-Palestinian advocacy. Khalil, a green card holder married to a U.S. citizen, was taken by federal immigration agents on March 8 for his role in helping lead last year's antiwar protests on Columbia's campus. While his court case plays out in New Jersey, Khalil remains held without charge in a Louisiana detention center – where he dictated to his attorney a searing op-ed for the Columbia Spectator that published Friday. 'The situation is oddly reminiscent of when I fled the brutality of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria and sought refuge in Lebanon,' he said. 'The logic used by the federal government to target myself and my peers is a direct extension of Columbia's repression playbook concerning Palestine.' Khalil accused the university of suppressing student-led dissent under the guise of combating antisemitism – including by giving Congress student disciplinary records, launching a task force that equates criticism of the state of Israel with hate speech, and creating an office that's meant to review discrimination reports but 'became a mechanism to persecute pro-Palestinian students with no due process.' Columbia faced public backlash after deciding to acquiesce to the Trump administration, which threatened to withdraw hundreds of millions of dollars in funding if universities didn't implement its restrictive demands that have been widely labeled as a crackdown on academic freedom, student dissent and free speech. After interim President Katrina Armstrong resigned from the school, Khalil said the board of trustees 'opted to set fire to the institution they're entrusted with' by appointing one of their own to the position meant to be held by academic leadership. 'To members of Columbia's faculty who pat themselves on the back for their progressive leanings but are content to limit their participation to performative statements: What will it take for you to resist the destruction of your university?' Khalil said. 'Are your positions worth more than the lives of your students and the integrity of your work?' Since Khalil's abduction, several more international students who support Palestinian freedom have either been abducted or are fighting threats of deportation. The activist named Yunseo Chung, Ranjani Srinivasan, Leqaa Kordia, Dr. Badar Khan Suriand Rümeysa Öztürk – some of whom were students at other universities. 'The movement for Palestinian freedom and justice at Columbia and across the United States has always centered community care,' Khalil said. 'Together you organized mutual aid for families in Gaza through bake sales and funding campaigns. You created study spaces, reading circles, and cross-movement solidarity. This movement has always been grassroots. It was led by students – many younger than me – who risked their careers, their degrees and their futures to demand divestment.' The detained activist stressed in his letter that students must keep fighting the federal government's efforts to use universities as instruments of state violence, even if they have no personal stake in Palestinian freedom. 'To the students who remain apathetic to Columbia's disregard for human life and its willingness to discard student safety: As pressure from the federal government intensifies, know that your neutrality on Palestine will not protect you. When the time comes for the federal government to target other causes, it will be your names that Columbia will offer on a silver platter, it will be your pleas that fall on deaf ears, it will be your just causes that are stonewalled.' 'The student movement will continue to carry the mantle of a free Palestine,' he continued. 'History will redeem us, while those who were content to wait on the sidelines will be forever remembered for their silence.'
Morocco World
06-04-2025
- Politics
- Morocco World
Mahmoud Khalil Accuses Columbia of Complicity in ICE Arrests
Rabat– On Saturday, April 5, Columbia University's student newspaper, the Columbia Spectator, published a letter from Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian born in Damascus and currently detained at the Lasalle Detention Center in Jena, Louisiana. Khalil has made global headlines, as he was arrested for leading peaceful pro-Palestinian protests in 2024 during his time as a student at Columbia. Dictated and verified by his attorney, Amy Greer, the letter is addressed to the university, which Khalil accuses of facilitating his 'abduction' by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and to the student body, which he urges 'must not abdicate their responsibility to resist oppression.' 'Since my abduction on March 8, the intimidation and kidnapping of international students who stand for Palestine has only accelerated,' Khalil wrote, referring to the intensifying crackdown on pro-Palestinian voices across the US. He named fellow Columbia students who have also been detained, as well as others 'beyond the gates of Columbia,' including Yunseo Chung, Ranjani Srinivasa, and Dr. Badr Khan Suri. Khalil drew parallels between the current US climate and the repression he fled under Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, where he sought refuge in Lebanon before arriving in the US where he is currently a lawful permanent resident. Khalil described his arrest as part of 'Columbia's repression playbook concerning Palestine,' and accused the university of not only ignoring the mass killing of Palestinians since Israel's escalation of violence in Gaza in October 2023, but of adopting the language of the Israeli government and Western media to justify Israel's genocide. 'You received countless emails from former University President Minouche Shafik, former Interim President Katrina Armstrong, and various deans manufacturing public hysteria about antisemitism without once mentioning the tens of thousands of Palestinians murdered under bombs made of your dollars,' Khalil wrote, emphasizing the university's complicity and the rationale behind ongoing protests and encampments demanding divestment from companies supporting Israel. Columbia's endowment, valued at approximately $13.6 billion, is managed with strict confidentiality and does not disclose its specific investments or their geographic allocation. Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a student-led campaign, has called for divestment from companies accused of supporting Israeli apartheid, occupation, and genocide including Airbnb, Caterpillar, and Google — each facing scrutiny for their ties to Israeli Occupation Forces' actions and government policies. . Khalil also condemned the university's weaponization of 'antisemitism' to suppress dissent, noting that Columbia shared student disciplinary records with Congress and established a task force on 'antisemitism' that falsely equates anti-Israel activism with hate speech in order to delegitimize protest. The soon to be father further criticized Columbia's 2020 partnership with Tel Aviv University, which is another endorsement of Israeli occupation and apartheid. 'In light of the dual-degree program with Tel Aviv University, I can't help but think that if I were in Palestine, some of these students would be the ones stopping me at checkpoints, raiding my university, piloting the drones surveilling my community, or killing my neighbors in their homes,' Khalil wrote, referring to pro-Israel students who sought to provoke peaceful protesters, some of whom have served in the IOF and later returned to campus to claim victimhood. Even from detention, Khalil paid tribute to slain Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat, who was intentionally targeted and killed by Israel in March, bringing the number of journalists and media workers killed by the entity since October 2023 to over 208. 'I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours, and it has been the highest honor of my life to die defending it and serving its people,' Khalil quoted from Shabat's posthumous social media message, echoing the call for continued resistance and student solidarity in the fight for Palestinian liberation. 'History will redeem us, while those who were content to wait on the sidelines will be forever remembered for their silence,' Khalil concluded. The letter was published amid nationwide 'Hands Off' protests drawing millions across all 50 states, with demonstrators voicing frustration over the Trump administration's economic and social agenda. Pro-Palestinian groups also joined large-scale marches in Washington, condemning the administration's support for Israel's renewed offensive in Gaza and its suppression of student protests and freedom of speech.
