As a Palestinian student, my time at Columbia has been marked by fear
On March 5, I watched dozens of police officers – invited onto campus by Columbia University’s Barnard College to break up a peaceful sit-in calling for the reversal of expulsions of three pro-Palestine students – trample and slam my classmates to the ground, arresting nine of them.
The violent police raid was a new escalation in the administration’s ongoing campaign to quash Palestinian activism on campus under the guise of combating anti-Semitism.
On March 8, the administration escalated further. It allowed the Department of Homeland Security to detain Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil at his university housing in New York, without a judicial warrant, in front of his eight-month pregnant wife.
Mahmoud’s arbitrary detention left many of my well-intentioned American classmates and professors feeling uneasy because it poses an existential threat to the principles of free speech, rule of law, and respect for human rights that form the cornerstone of their identity as citizens in a US democracy.
I find it insulting that Columbia President Katrina Armstrong claims to be “heartbroken” over these developments while leading an administration that actively criminalises pro-Palestine speech and gives Zionist students and faculty carte blanche to orchestrate social media campaigns calling for deportation of students.
I’ve come to recognise Mahmoud’s ordeal as part of Columbia’s broader pattern of making examples of a select few to emotionally terrorise the rest of us against daring to challenge the status quo.
Pro-Palestine protesters have filed lawsuit against UCLA over encampment attack
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/20/ucla-gaza-protests
Pro-Palestine protesters from the University of California, Los Angeles, are suing the university, accusing it of allowing pro-Israel rallies to frighten and assault people at an encampment that was on campus for months, The New York Times reports.
The encampment was set up as part of nationwide campus protests that called for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The Times said the demonstrators accused the university, as well as police forces, of failing to protect them and shutting down the camp without legal justification, after it was attacked by pro-Israel protesters in April last year.
The new complaint was filed on behalf of 35 pro-Palestinian activists, including “students, faculty members, legal observers, journalists and sympathisers”, the Times said.
It comes as the administration of US President Donald Trump pledged to expel and deport students who joined protests across university campuses last year.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/16/us/ucla-student-protests-counterprotesters-invs/index.html
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