Columbia University anti-Israel protest leader Mahmoud Khalil is scheduled to speak at this week’s annual South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas.

Khalil will participate on Sunday in a conversation “on the cost of dissent,” with The Guardian Editor Betsy Reed and Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center For Constitutional Rights who was a lawyer for Khalil in his deportation proceedings, according to the SXSW schedule. The weeklong festival each March convenes around 300,000 guests, including film and media professionals, executives and politicians to discuss culture, technology and innovation.

“Khalil joins The Guardian for an unflinching conversation on his ordeal, the system that tried to silence him, and the personal and political stakes of resistance,” SXSW’s website states. 

At Columbia, Khalil was a key organizer of the anti-Israel encampment in April 2024, a two-week demonstration in the center of campus during Israel’s war in Gaza. The demonstration included several incidents of assault on Jewish students. Protesters used threatening and antisemitic slogans, including, “Go back to Poland”; signs with the Hamas symbol and the words “I’m with them”; and chants calling for Hamas attacks on Tel Aviv. 

Khalil was a lead negotiator with the administration in negotiating to end the encampment, where he demanded the university sever ties with Israeli institutions and grant amnesty for students involved in the encampment.

A former Columbia graduate student who grew up in Syria but is of Palestinian descent, Khalil was released in June from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana, where he had been held for three months pending deportation proceedings. A federal appeals court ruled in January that Khalil could be rearrested. One month after his release, Khalil repeatedly declined to condemn Hamas in a CNN interview.

Earlier this week, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani faced criticism from Jewish groups for hosting Khalil at his official residence. 

SXSW did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Jewish Insider about its decision to host Khalil.