The Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals rejected Columbia University anti-Israel protest leader Mahmoud Khalil’s attempt to dismiss his deportation case on Thursday, his lawyers said. 

Khalil called the ruling, which was widely expected and brings him closer to re-arrest and possible deportation, “biased and politically motivated.” 

“The only thing I am guilty of is speaking out against the genocide in Palestine — and this administration has weaponized the immigration system to punish me for it,” Khalil said in a statement. The ruling has not yet been publicized by the DOJ. 

Khalil was a key organizer of Columbia University’s 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 later described the Oct. 7 attacks as “a desperate attempt to tell the world that Palestinians are here. That was my interpretation of why Hamas did the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel,” he said in a New York Times interview. 

Last month, while speaking at the annual South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, Khalil argued that “claims of antisemitism are being weaponized to silence any critique of the U.S. support to Israel.”  

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. Judge Michael Farbiarz ruled that his prolonged detention likely violated his constitutional rights. 

A federal appeals court then ruled in January that Khalil could be rearrested. In a 2-1 ruling, a panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit decided that the federal district court in New Jersey that issued Khalil’s release did not have jurisdiction over the matter and that it should have been handled in immigration court, which is part of the executive branch overseen by the Justice Department, meaning Khalil is now liable to be rearrested.

The anti-Israel campus protest movement is facing “fear and exhaustion” amid the Trump administration’s crackdown, Mahmoud Khalil, who led demonstrations against Israel on Columbia University’s campus in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza, said on Sunday at the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas.

“With the Biden administration, you protest because you feel you can move the needle a little bit,” said Khalil. “But with Trump, it’s like plain tyranny. They would not listen.” 

Khalil, who spoke three days after an attempted terrorist attack at a synagogue in Michigan, noted that “antisemitism is real in this country” and condemned “violence against civilians.” 

At the same time, he argued that “claims of antisemitism are being weaponized to silence any critique of the U.S. support to Israel.” 

“All mainstream Jewish organizations in this country are disregarding real antisemitism in the Republican Party and just protecting Israel,” continued Khalil. He spoke in an hourlong 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 ongoing deportation proceedings.

SXSW, a weeklong festival that convenes around 300,000 guests, including film and media professionals, executives and politicians to discuss culture, technology and innovation, faced scrutiny from some Jewish leaders over its decision to platform Khalil. 

Greg Rosenbaum, SXSW senior vice president of programming, told the Austin American-Statesman that hosting the discussion does not mean the festival endorses Khalil’s views.

“While many people, including us, may strongly disagree with some of the views, the reality is that expressing some of those views in a country with free speech protections led him to be imprisoned,” said Rosenbaum. “That doesn’t mean we support what he says, but it does mean that there’s a broader conversation that’s worth having about speech, disagreement and the consequences people face for expressing controversial ideas.”

Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, expressed dismay at this justification. “But platforms amplify voices — that’s the point,” he wrote on X prior to Khalil’s appearance. “Giving him this platform is a mistake.

Khalil was a key organizer of Columbia University’s 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 later described the Oct. 7 attacks as “a desperate attempt to tell the world that Palestinians are here. That was my interpretation of why Hamas did the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel,” he said in a New York Times interview.  

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. 

Asked on Sunday by Reed about his repeated refusal to denounce Hamas in a CNN interview shortly after being released from detention, Khalil still did not condemn the terrorist organization. Instead, he said he “would never answer such a question in a 20-second sound bite,” and argued that it was a “double standard” to be asked the question in the first place.   

“When Palestinians get asked this question, they are not interested in my views,” he said. “That question was asked a month after my release. If you say yes, maybe you are worth listening to and if not, then you’re discredited. That’s why I refused to answer that question. 

“You can never justify violence and Oct. 7 but to them you can never contextualize Oct. 7, [yet] Oct. 7 justifies everything that happened after. To me that’s a double standard. These are all deliberate attempts to silence people.”  

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.

The Anti-Defamation League condemned New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday for hosting Columbia University anti-Israel protest leader Mahmoud Khalil at his official residence. 

“Welcoming someone known for justifying the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks as an honored guest at Gracie Mansion — while some in the Mayor’s inner circle have amplified antisemitic content and posts dismissing the atrocities of that day — sends a deeply troubling message,” an ADL spokesperson told Jewish Insider. 

“Gracie Mansion belongs to all New Yorkers. Public office must never be used to legitimize hate, and New York’s Jewish community deserves a mayor who makes that clear in both words and actions,” said the ADL spokesperson. 

On Monday night, Mamdani posted a photo which included his wife, who has come under fire in recent days for her social media support for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks, and Khalil having an iftar meal at Gracie Mansion.

Other Jewish groups have so far declined to publicly weigh in on the dinner.  

Khalil, a former Columbia graduate student who grew up in Syria but is of Palestinian descent, 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.

Former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the school’s anti-Israel protest movement, will likely be rearrested and deported to the North African country of Algeria, a top Department of Homeland Security official said Wednesday.

Khalil was released in June from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana, where he had been held for three months. Last week, a federal appeals court ruled that he could be rearrested, instructing the lower court to dismiss Khalil’s habeas petition, a court filing that challenged his incarceration and eventually secured his release. His deportation proceedings had been paused.

Asked by Katie Pavlich on NewsNation on Wednesday whether there are plans to rearrest Khalil and move forward with deportation, Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, said “it looks like he’ll go to Algeria. That’s what the thought is right now.”

“It’s a reminder for those who are in this country on a visa or on a green card. You are a guest in this country — act like it,” said McLaughlin. “It is a privilege, not a right, to be in this country to live or to study.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at a press conference on Thursday that Khalil “is a New Yorker. He should remain in New York City.”

“We have seen this attack on him as part of a larger attack on the freedom of speech that is especially pronounced when it comes to the use of that speech to stand up for Palestinian human rights. I will make that clear to everyone. He deserves to be in the city just like any other New Yorker,” Mamdani said.

Khalil, who grew up in Syria but is of Palestinian descent, first came to the U.S. on a student visa, and later married a U.S. citizen and received a green card. While a graduate student at Columbia in 2024, he led campus protests against the war in Gaza and subsequent negotiations with university administrators. 

The federal government sought to deport Khalil on the basis of his failure to disclose crucial information in his green card application, including his former employment by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency that works with Palestinians, as well as his membership in the unofficial campus group Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which was banned from Instagram last year for promoting violence. 

Immigration authorities arrested Khalil at his home in March. He was not charged with a crime. The White House said at the time that the government had authority to arrest and deport Khalil based on the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, which states that if the secretary of state has “reasonable grounds” to believe that a migrant poses “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences,” that person is eligible for deportation.

A memo submitted in May to the court in Louisiana and signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio cited the president’s authority to expel noncitizens whose presence in the country could have adverse foreign policy consequences, regardless of whether they have committed a crime. It stated that Khalil’s arrest and planned deportation were based on his “participation in antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.” 

A federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the school’s anti-Israel protest movement, could be rearrested. 

Khalil was released in June from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana, where he had been held for three months. 

A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reopened the case on Thursday, instructing the lower court to dismiss Khalil’s habeas petition, a court filing that challenged his incarceration and eventually secured his release. In a 2-1 ruling, the panel decided that the federal district court in New Jersey that issued Khalil’s release did not have jurisdiction over the matter and that it should have been handled in immigration court, which is part of the executive branch overseen by the Justice Department, meaning Khalil is now liable to be rearrested.

Baher Azmy, a lawyer for Khalil, told The New York Times, “We are disappointed with and strongly disagree with the majority opinion, but take heart in the very powerful and persuasive dissenting opinion. We’ll continue to fight with all available legal options.” The dissenting option came from Judge Arianna Freeman, who said that Khalil had proved that he faced irreversible injuries during his detention. 

Khalil’s deportation proceedings are currently paused, secured through a deal between his lawyers and the federal government. Thursday’s ruling could mean that the case restarts again, though it will very likely be appealed.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani responded to the reopening of Khalil’s case, saying in a statement that “last year’s arrest of Mahmoud Khalil was more than just a chilling act of political repression, it was an attack on all of our constitutional rights.”

“Now, as the crackdown on pro-Palestinian free speech continues, Mahmoud is being threatened with rearrest. Mahmoud is free—and must remain free,” said Mamdani.

Khalil, who grew up in Syria but is of Palestinian descent, first came to the U.S. on a student visa, and later married a U.S. citizen and received a green card. While a graduate student at Columbia in 2024, he led campus  protests against the war in Gaza and subsequent negotiations with university administrators. 

The federal government sought to deport Khalil on the basis of his failure to disclose crucial information in his green card application, including his former employment by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency that works with Palestinians, as well as his membership in the unofficial campus group Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which was banned from Instagram last year for promoting violence. 

Immigration authorities arrested Khalil at his home in March. He was not charged with a crime. The White House said at the time that the government had authority to arrest and deport Khalil based on the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, which states that if the secretary of state has “reasonable grounds” to believe that a migrant poses “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences,” that person is eligible for deportation.

A memo submitted in May to the court in Louisiana and signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio cited the president’s authority to expel noncitizens whose presence in the country could have adverse foreign policy consequences, regardless of whether they have committed a crime. It stated that Khalil’s arrest and planned deportation were based on his “participation in antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.” 

Khalil’s arrest was largely met with cautious celebration from mainstream Jewish groups at the time who said his deportation was “fully justified” but emphasised a need for due process. 

Khail was released on June 20 when Judge Michael Farbiarz ruled that his prolonged detention likely violated his constitutional rights. 

One day after his release, Khalil appeared at a rally in New York City organized by a group accused of ties to the Iranian regime protesting the U.S.’ airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities that had occurred a few days earlier. 

Days after the University of Michigan kicks off the new school year this week, the campus is slated to host two anti-Israel speakers — former Columbia University protest leader Mahmoud Khalil and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), one of the most outspoken critics of Israel in Congress.  

On Wednesday afternoon, Tlaib is scheduled to speak at an on-campus press conference titled “United Against Genocide, United Against Repression” hosted by The People’s Coalition Michigan. 

“The [UMich] Regents continue to shield their indefensible investments in the genocidal state of israel by attacking anyone who stands in solidarity with Palestine,” the group wrote on social media. “[Tlaib] will join students, workers, and community members to bring attention to the Regents’ long and continuing campaign to suppress free speech.”

Later that evening, the campus chapter of Students Organize for Syria is scheduled to host Khalil, who was released in June from the immigration detention center where he had been held for three months as the Trump administration sought to have him deported. 

One day after his release, the anti-Israel activist appeared at a rally in New York City organized by the National Iranian American Council, a group accused of having ties to the Iranian regime, where he protested U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Khalil, who has repeatedly declined to condemn Hamas, will speak “on liberation and freedom,” according to the campus group. 

The events come days before thousands of pro-Palestinian activists are set to gather in Detroit,  beginning Aug. 29, for the second annual People’s Conference for Palestine, under the slogan “Gaza is the Compass.” 

The three-day conference features several radical anti-Israel speakers including Khalil and Hussam Shaheen, a convicted Palestinian terrorist released from Israeli prison on Feb. 1 as part of a ceasefire and hostage-release deal with Hamas. 

A State Department spokesperson said Friday that all international speakers for the conference will be placed on a visa “look out” status due to concerns surrounding speakers’ ties to terrorism, according to The Jerusalem Post. 

Anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil, who was a prominent leader of the Columbia University protest movement, repeatedly declined to condemn Hamas in a CNN interview on Tuesday. 

“It’s disingenuous to ask about condemning Hamas while Palestinians are the ones being starved now by Israel,” Khalil told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown when asked whether he condemns the U.S.-designated terrorist organization. “It’s not condemning Oct. 6, where 260 Palestinians were killed by Israel before Oct. 7. I hate the selective outrage of condemnation because this wouldn’t lead to a constructive conversation.” 

Khalil also accused the Trump administration of “weaponizing antisemitism” to “silence my speech” and denied that he engaged in any antisemitic activity. 

Khalil, a U.S. green card holder, was detained in March with the Trump administration claiming that he posed adverse foreign policy consequences to the country, though he was never charged with a crime. Last month, Khalil was released from the immigration detention center where he had been held for three months after a district judge said it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue detaining a legal U.S. resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn’t been accused of any violence. 

In response to Khalil’s remarks, the Department of Homeland Security doubled down on its allegations against him. 

“Mahmoud Khalil refuses to condemn Hamas because he IS a terrorist sympathizer not because DHS ‘painted’ him as one,” DHS wrote on X. “He ‘branded’ himself as antisemite through his own hateful behavior and rhetoric.”

“It is a privilege to be granted a visa or green card to live and study in the United States of America,” the DHS post continued. “The Trump Administration acted well within its statutory and constitutional authority to detain Khalil, as it does with any alien who advocates for violence, glorifies and supports terrorists, harasses Jews, and damages property.”

Just one day after his release, Khalil, who grew up in Syria but is of Palestinian descent, appeared at a rally in New York City organized by a group accused of ties to the Iranian regime protesting the U.S.’ airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

One day after former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil was released from the immigration detention center where he had been held for three months, the anti-Israel activist appeared at a rally in New York City organized by a group accused of ties to the Iranian regime protesting the  U.S.’ weekend airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“Mahmoud Khalil is a freedom fighter … who refuses to remain silent while watching a genocide in Palestine,” Khalil told a cheering crowd on Sunday, where he led anti-Israel chants including, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free,” at the People’s Forum protest, a demonstration organized by the National Iranian-American Council to protest the U.S. military strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites.

Iranian dissidents and critics of NIAC, a U.S.-based Iranian-American advocacy group that calls for diplomacy with the Iranian regime and was critical of the Biden administration’s approach to Israel and the Middle East, accuse the group of being tied to the regime. 

Khalil, who grew up in Syria but is of Palestinian descent and living in the U.S. on a green card, led last year’s anti-Israel campus protests at Columbia against the war in Gaza and subsequent negotiations with university administrators. He was detained in March and released on Saturday after U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue detaining a legal U.S. resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn’t been accused of any violence. 

Khalil’s release was met with support from some left-wing lawmakers.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who met Khalil at New Jersey’s Newark-Liberty International Airport a day after he was freed from a federal immigration facility in Louisiana, said that his detention by the Trump administration violated the First Amendment and was “an affront to every American.”

“He has been accused, baselessly, of horrific allegations simply because the Trump administration and our overall establishment disagrees with his political speech,” Ocasio-Cortez added. 

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) wrote on X that he welcomed the decision to release Khalil. “As I have said before, his prolonged detention — without charges — is a chilling, McCarthyesque action in response to the exercise of First Amendment rights to free speech and raises serious constitutional concerns,” Nadler said. 

A federal judge in New Jersey issued an order on Wednesday ruling that the Trump administration’s monthslong effort to deport Columbia University protest leader Mahmoud Khalil was likely unconstitutional — but that his failure to disclose his affiliations with anti-Israel groups raises concerns. 

Judge Michael Farbiarz said in his opinion that the court found that Khalil is unlikely to succeed in his challenge against the claim that he failed to disclose crucial information in his green card application, including former employment by UNRWA and his membership in the campus group Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which has been banned from Instagram for promoting anti-Israel violence.  

Farbiarz also noted that the charges in Khalil’s case are “unprecedented” and likely unconstitutional, stating, “the issue now before the Court has been this: does the Constitution allow the Secretary of State to use Section 1227, as applied through the determination, to try to remove the Petitioner from the United States? The Court’s answer: likely not.” Farbiarz said he will soon issue an order about next steps in the case.

The opinion ruling was a response to an appeal filed by Khalil’s lawyers last month, after the Trump administration presented claims against Khalil, a former graduate student who led last year’s anti-Israel campus protests against the war in Gaza and subsequent student negotiations with university administration.

A memo submitted to the court in Louisiana — where Khalil remains held in an ICE detention facility — signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio cited the president’s authority to expel noncitizens whose presence in the country could have adverse foreign policy consequences, regardless of whether they have committed a crime. It stated that Khalil’s arrest and planned deportation are based on his “participation in antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.” 

“Condoning anti-Semitic conduct and disruptive protests in the United States would severely undermine that significant foreign policy objective,” Rubio wrote in the two-page memo.

One day after the memo was submitted, an immigration judge in Louisiana ruled that the government’s argument that Khalil’s presence in the U.S. posed “potentially serious foreign policy consequences” was sufficient to rule he could be removed from the country. Khalil’s lawyers argue that he’s being punished for what they say is protected speech.

Khalil, who grew up in Syria but is of Palestinian descent, first came to the U.S. on a student visa and later married a U.S. citizen and received a green card. He was arrested on March 8 at his university-owned apartment, without being charged with a crime, making him the first high-profile target of the Trump administration’s crackdown on foreign students.  

The prolonged case is a contrast to a Vermont judge’s decision last month ordering the immediate release of Mohsen Mahdawi, another Palestinian student from Columbia who helped organize campus anti-Israel demonstrations, but remained jailed for just two weeks. Mahdawi graduated from Columbia last week. 

For a brief moment, it looked like 2024 all over again: Tents were erected at Yale University’s central plaza on Tuesday night, with anti-Israel activists hoping to loudly protest the visit of far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to campus. Videos of students in keffiyehs, shouting protest slogans, started to spread online on Tuesday night.

But then something unexpected happened. University administrators showed up, threatening disciplinary action, and the protesters were told to leave — or face consequences. So they left. The new encampment didn’t last a couple hours, let alone overnight. The next day, Yale announced that it had revoked its recognition of Yalies4Palestine, the student group that organized the protest. (On Wednesday night, a large protest occurred outside the off-campus building where Ben-Gvir was speaking.)

Meanwhile, at Cornell University, President Michael Kotlikoff announced on Wednesday that he had canceled an upcoming campus performance by R&B singer Kehlani because of her history of anti-Israel social media posts. He wrote in an email to Cornell affiliates that he had heard from many people who were “angry, hurt and confused” that the school’s annual spring music festival “would feature a performer who has espoused antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiments in performances, videos and on social media.” 

The quick decisions from administrators at Yale and Cornell to shut down anti-Israel activity reflect something of a vibe shift on American campuses. One year ago, anti-Israel encampments were, for a few weeks, de rigueur on campus quads across the nation. University leaders seemed paralyzed, unsure of how to handle protests that in many cases explicitly excluded Jewish or Zionist students and at times became violent. That’s a markedly different environment from what’s happening at those same schools so far this spring. 

“In general, protest activity is way down this year as compared to last year,” Hillel International CEO Adam Lehman told Jewish Insider. 

There is no single reason that protests have subsided. Jewish students, campus Jewish leaders and professionals at Jewish advocacy organizations attribute the change to a mix of factors: stricter consequences from university leaders, fear of running afoul of President Donald Trump’s pledge to deport pro-Hamas foreign students and the issue generally losing steam and cachet among easily distracted students. 

Last spring, an encampment at The George Washington University was only dismantled after the university faced threats from Congress. Now, no such protest is taking place — which Daniel Schwartz, a Jewish history professor, said was likely due in part to the “sense that the university was going to be responding much more fiercely to anything resembling what happened last year.” 

“For the most part, the enforcement of rules, the understanding of what the rules are, what you can do, what you can’t do, requiring people to get permits for protests, has really calmed things down [from] the sort of violence that we saw last year,” said Jordan Acker, a member of the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan, who has faced antisemitic vandalism and targeted, personal protests from Michigan students.

Michael Simon, the executive director at Northwestern Hillel, came into the school year with a “big question mark” of how the school’s new policies, which provide strict guidance for student protests and the type of behavior allowed at them, would be applied. “I’m going to say it with a real hedging: at least up until now, I would say we’ve seen the lower end of what I would have expected,” he said of campus anti-Israel protests.

Many major universities like Northwestern spent last summer honing their campus codes of conduct and their regulations for student protests, making clear at the start of the school year that similar actions would not be tolerated again. In February, for instance, Barnard College expelled two students who loudly disrupted an Israeli history class at Columbia,. 

“For the most part, the enforcement of rules, the understanding of what the rules are, what you can do, what you can’t do, requiring people to get permits for protests, has really calmed things down [from] the sort of violence that we saw last year,” said Jordan Acker, a member of the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan, who has faced antisemitic vandalism and targeted, personal protests from Michigan students.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has pressured top universities to crack down on antisemitic activity. The president’s threats to revoke federal funding if universities don’t get antisemitism under control has drawn pushback — Harvard is suing the Trump administration over its decision to withhold $2.2 billion in federal funds from the school — but it has also led universities to take action to address the problem. 

Sharon Nazarian, an adjunct professor at UCLA and the vice chair of the Anti-Defamation League’s board of directors, said there is “no question” that “the national atmosphere of fear among university administrators for castigation and targeting by the [Trump] administration is also present” at UCLA and other University of California campuses.

“My sense is that being anti-Israel is not as much of the popular thing anymore,” Evan Cohen, a senior at the University of Michigan, said at a Wednesday webinar hosted by Hillel International for Jewish high school seniors. “On my campus, there are other hot topic issues. There might be more focus on what’s happening with U.S. domestic politics.” 

Rule-breaking student activists also face a heightened risk of law enforcement action. A dozen anti-Israel student protesters were charged with felonies this month for vandalizing the Stanford University president’s office last June. On Wednesday, local, state and federal law enforcement officials in Michigan raided the homes of three people connected to anti-Israel protests at the University of Michigan. Protesters’ extreme tactics  have scared off some would-be allies.

“I think some of the most activist students went too far at the end of last year with the takeover of the president’s office and a lot of pretty intense graffiti in important places on campus,” said Rabbi Jessica Kirschner, the executive director of Hillel at Stanford. “I think a lot of other students looked at that and said, ‘Oh, this is perhaps not where we want to be.’”

Students’ priorities shift each year, and other issues beyond Israel are also vying for their attention. Trump’s policies targeting foreign students are drawing ire from students at liberal universities, many of which have large populations of international students.

“My sense is that being anti-Israel is not as much of the popular thing anymore,” Evan Cohen, a senior at the University of Michigan, said at a Wednesday webinar hosted by Hillel International for Jewish high school seniors. “On my campus, there are other hot topic issues. There might be more focus on what’s happening with U.S. domestic politics.” 

But the lack of protests does not mean that campus life has returned to normal for Jewish students, many of whom still fear — and face — opprobrium for their pro-Israel views.

“It’s easy to avoid the protests but if you are an Israeli student or a Jewish student perceived to be a Zionist, you should expect to be discriminated against in social spaces at the university,” Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, executive director of Harvard Hillel, told JI. “That is the most powerful way students are impacted by all of this.”

Ken Marcus, founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which since Oct. 7 has represented dozens of Jewish students in Title VI civil rights cases against their universities, said that campus-related lawsuits are only faintly slowing down this semester. 

“A lot of the staff and the administration think that, ‘OK, since there’s no protest outside, all the Jewish students must feel OK, and let’s put all this stuff that happened in the spring behind us.’ It’s really not the case,” said Or Yahalom, a senior at Northwestern University who was born in Israel. “That doesn’t mean that it’s all better for students. Jewish students are increasingly afraid to speak openly about their identity or connection to Israel, except in private, safe Jewish spaces.”

“Some campuses have been less intense than during last year’s historically awful period, but others have been bad enough,” Marcus told JI. “I believe that the federal crackdown, coupled with the impact of lawsuits and Title VI cases, has had a favorable impact at many campuses, but the problems have hardly gone away.”

Or Yahalom, a senior at Northwestern University who was born in Israel, recently attended a dinner with Northwestern President Michael Schill, who has faced criticism from Jewish Northwestern affiliates — including several members of its antisemitism advisory committee — for what they saw as the administration’s failure to adequately address antisemitism. 

“A lot of the staff and the administration think that, ‘OK, since there’s no protest outside, all the Jewish students must feel OK, and let’s put all this stuff that happened in the spring behind us.’ It’s really not the case,” said Yahalom. “That doesn’t mean that it’s all better for students. Jewish students are increasingly afraid to speak openly about their identity or connection to Israel, except in private, safe Jewish spaces.” 

Even without massive encampments, disruptive anti-Israel protests and campus actions have not gone away entirely, though they have been more infrequent this academic year. A Northwestern academic building housing the school’s Holocaust center was vandalized with “DEATH TO ISRAEL” graffiti last week. The office of Joseph Pelzman, an economist at The George Washington University who authored a plan calling for the U.S. to relocate Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and redevelop the enclave, was vandalized in February. The Georgetown University Student Government Association is slated to hold a campus-wide referendum on university divestment from companies and academic institutions with ties to Israel at the end of the month. Smaller-scale protests continue at Columbia, with students chaining themselves to the Manhattan university’s main gate this week to protest the ICE detention of ​​Mohsen Mahdawi and Mahmoud Khalil, two foreign students who had led protests last year. 

Leaders of the University of Michigan’s anti-Israel coalition held a sham trial for the university president and Board of Regents members in the middle of the Diag, the main campus quad, this week. The event took place without issue, and the activists left when it ended. 

“I wouldn’t want to say that it’s perfect,” said Acker, the Board of Regents member. “But it’s certainly much better than a year ago.” 

The school year isn’t over. Some students at Columbia are planning to erect another encampment this month, NBC News reported on Wednesday. 

But they’ll be doing so at an institution with new leadership, weeks after Columbia reached an agreement with the Trump administration, where the Ivy League university pledged to take stronger action against antisemitism to avoid a massive funding cut. The pressure on Columbia to crack down on any encampment will be massive.

The arrest on Monday of a Palestinian student at Columbia University who helped organize campus anti-Israel demonstrations was the latest front in the Trump administration’s closely scrutinized crackdown on foreign activists who have expressed sympathy for Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups. 

Mohsen Mahdawi, a 34-year-old green card holder born and raised in the West Bank, was arrested and detained by federal immigration officers on Monday after he appeared at a U.S. citizenship interview in Vermont, where he resides.

Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said in an email to Jewish Insider on Tuesday that Mahdawi “was a ringleader in the Columbia protests,” sharing a New York Post article citing anonymous State Department sources claiming that he had used “threatening rhetoric and intimidation” against Jewish students.

“Due to privacy and other considerations, and visa confidentiality, we generally will not comment on Department actions with respect to specific cases,” a State Department spokesperson told JI on Tuesday.

Mahdawi’s lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition on Monday calling his detention unlawful. “This case concerns the government’s retaliatory and targeted detention and attempted removal of Mr. Mahdawi for his constitutionally protected speech,” the petition said.    

Representatives for Columbia declined to comment on Mahdawi’s arrest, citing federal student privacy law.

Like Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian green card holder and recent Columbia University graduate arrested by federal immigration agents last month, Mahdawi has not yet been charged with a crime. Instead, he appears to have been detained on a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act cited by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to justify expelling foreigners who are seen as a threat to U.S. foreign policy and national security, which the petition also challenges.

Last week, a federal judge in Louisiana ordered that Khalil can be deported, determining such arguments are sufficient grounds for his removal, in a decision that is expected to face further challenges.

A federal judge in Vermont ruled on Monday that Mahdawi must be held in the state and cannot be removed from the country for now. 

Mahdawi’s legal team did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.    

Mahdawi had been a key organizer of anti-Israel protests at Columbia that roiled the campus after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. He helped to found Columbia University Apartheid Divest and was a member of the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, which has expressed pro-Hamas rhetoric, among other student anti-Israel groups. 

For his part, Mahdawi, who moved to the U.S. from a refugee camp in the West Bank in 2014, called Hamas a “product of the Israeli occupation” shortly after the attacks and reportedly helped to write a statement released by Columbia student groups on Oct. 14, 2023, claiming that the “Palestinian struggle for freedom is rooted in international law, under which occupied peoples have the right to resist the occupation of their land.”

He also appeared at a rally a month after the attack alongside Nerdeen Kiswani of Within Our Lifetime, a radical group that advocates for armed resistance against Israel. 

In an interview on “60 Minutes” in December 2023, Mahdawi voiced sympathy for Hamas’ terror attacks.

“I did not say that I justify what Hamas has done. I said I can empathize,” he said. “To empathize is to understand the root cause and to not look at any event or situation in a vacuum. This is for me that path moving forward.”

On his Instagram page in August, meanwhile, Mahdawi posted photos commemorating what he called the “martyrdom” of his “cousin,” Maysara Masharqa, a field commander in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the armed wing of Fatah, describing him as a “fierce resistance fighter,” according to The Washington Free Beacon. 

“Here is Mesra who offers his soul as a sacrifice for the homeland and for the blood of the martyrs as a gift for the victory of Gaza and in defense of the dignity of his homeland and his people against the vicious Israeli occupation in the West Bank,” Mahdawi wrote.

While the petition filed by his legal team notes that he stepped back from such activism in March 2024, Mahdawi’s public statements drew intense scrutiny from several antisemitism watchdog groups that are pushing the Trump administration to target campus protest leaders.

Mahdawi, who was an undergraduate at Columbia University, was planning to pursue a master’s degree in the fall, according to the petition.

His arrest drew criticism on Monday from Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Peter Welch (D-VT) and Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT), who said in a statement that “he must be afforded due process under the law and immediately released from detention.” 

Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) are circulating a letter to administration officials defending detained Columbia University anti-Israel leader Mahmoud Khalil and questioning the authorities supporting his detention and revocation of his green card.

The letter had gathered over 100 signatures by Thursday evening, a source familiar with the situation said. It does not mention or acknowledge the specific nature of Khalil’s activities on Columbia’s campus, including his involvement with the anti-Israel encampment and the alleged distribution of pro-Hamas pamphlets at a protest he helped organize.

Khalil was also reportedly under investigation by Columbia itself for helping to organize an unauthorized protest where demonstrators supported Hamas and being involved in social media posts attacking Zionism and other acts of discrimination.

The letter focuses primarily on challenging the legal underpinnings of Khalil’s arrest, which the administration has said is based on an infrequently used law allowing the secretary of state to revoke the visa of any foreign national whose presence or activities pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

The letter repeatedly accuses the administration of violating Khalil’s free speech rights and attempting to silence him for dissenting.

“We write to express our grave concern over the constitutionally dubious use of an obsolete Cold War-era section of the Immigration and Nationality Act to have federal agents pick up a lawful permanent resident at his home, arrest him, and detain him simply for exercising his First Amendment right to free speech,” the letter reads.

It refers to the law in question as “a dusty old statutory section,” compares its use to the Alien and Sedition Acts and McCarthyism and says the administration has failed to outline the foreign policy effects of Khalil’s “exercising his free speech rights.”

“While this case is ostensibly about Mr. Khalil’s political speech about the war in Gaza, the case raises far broader concerns across the country about the silencing of political dissent,” the lawmakers continued, comparing it to the actions of authoritarian regimes. 

“While there may be disagreement with Mr. Khalil’s speech, it is his Constitutional right in our democracy to express his political views. That is why every American should be outraged by this brazen attempt to use the power of the United States government to silence and punish people who do not agree with the sitting president.”

The lawmakers also argued that the decision would inevitably be overturned in court, and requested information from the administration about past use of the statute in question and about the specific reasons, evidence and legal findings underlying the decision to detain Khalil and revoke his green card.

Another, more stridently worded letter, circulated by far-left lawmakers earlier in the week netted just 14 Democrats’ signatures.