At a time when some elite universities are acquiescing to the Trump administration’s demands to crack down on antisemitic activity on campus, Georgetown University is pushing back by issuing statements supportive of a university professor and postdoctoral scholar who was detained by federal authorities last week for his reported affiliations with Hamas. 

Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national who was studying and teaching as a postdoctoral fellow at the university on a student visa, was detained by federal immigration authorities outside of his home in Virginia last Wednesday. The Department of Homeland Security alleges he was “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media” and “has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas,” according to a statement from Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS. 

Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, antisemitic demonstrations and graffiti incidents have roiled Georgetown’s campus. Weeks after Oct. 7, a Georgetown faculty statement condemning the war in Gaza failed to mention the Jewish connection to Israel or Hamas’ massacre committed against Israelis. 

Among Georgetown’s faculty, Jonathan Brown, chair of the university’s Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies and son-in-law of convicted terror supporter Sami Al-Arian, has gone on several X tirades since Oct. 7 slamming Israel. 

Shortly after the attacks in November 2023, Brown tweeted, “Israel has been engaged in a genocidal project for decades. I’m a full professor.” 

“Israeli security forces are lunatics. Israel is insanely racist,” Brown, who serves as the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization, tweeted in March 2024. 

At a Middle East symposium in 2015, Brown said, “The problem is that the Israeli political creature, the Israeli political establishment, has not told Jews in Israel that they are not allowed to take stuff that doesn’t belong to them, and that is, I think, a fundamental problem. … If you can tell people that your religious belief does not give you the right to take the possessions of someone else.”

In the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, Georgetown Law School hosted Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd, who celebrated Hamas as a “liberation movement” and called the massacre a “resistance tactic.” In February, the law school planned to host an event with a Palestinian terrorist convicted for his role in the murder of an Israeli girl, which the university canceled shortly before following pressure from pro-Israel students and lawmakers. 

While university administration has not publicly commented on Brown’s rhetoric nor many of the other incidents on campus, the day following Suri’s detainment, Georgetown University Interim President Robert Groves and Joel Hellman, dean of the School of Foreign Service, where Suri was a fellow, condemned the arrest and planned deportation in a campus-wide email. 

In the email, which was posted to Georgetown’s website, Groves wrote that the university “needs students and faculty with different worldviews.”

“We must in turn build an environment where all members of our community are free to express their thoughts. The University has rules that protect our community members’ rights to free and open inquiry, deliberation and debate, even if the underlying ideas may be difficult, controversial or objectionable,” Groves said, arguing that the school’s Jesuit roots “require that we strive to live ‘the Ignatian Presupposition,’ interpreted in Jesuit education as the idea that we must always begin with the assumption that others are acting with good will. Sincere dialogue requires listening, really listening, as well as speaking.”

In a separate email to SFS, Hellman said, “Like many in our community, Dr. Suri has been exercising his constitutionally protected rights to express his views on the war in the Middle East.” He argued that the detention brings a “chilling effect such events could have on freedom of expression on this campus” and said the university will “determine what additional steps it can take” to support Suri as he heads to court, already having filed a writ of habeas corpus on his behalf. 

The Bridge Initiative, a Georgetown University research project led by Professor John Esposito, founding director of Georgetown’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, published a blog post on Thursday claiming that the “smear campaign” against Suri before he was detained was “deeply interconnected” and named multiple Jewish organizations and individuals who “used their political influence and connections to the administration to target” him.