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      US claims student’s activism could ‘undermine’ Middle East peace

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      The Trump administration is justifying its efforts to deport a student at Columbia University by saying that his activities could “potentially undermine” the Middle East peace process.In a memo from the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, reviewed exclusively by the New York Times, the administration asserts that Mohsen Mahdawi, 34, a green-card holder and student who led pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia, had undermined the Middle East peace process and threatened the US goal to “peacefully” resolve conflict in Israel and Gaza.Mahdawi was apprehended at an immigration services center in Vermont, where he had arrived to complete the final step in his citizenship process. Instead of taking a citizenship test, as he had expected to do, he was arrested and handcuffed by immigration officers.Rubio’s memo justifying the arrest cites the same authority used to detain Mahdawi’s fellow Columbia protester and green-card holder Mahmoud Khalil. In both cases, Rubio cited a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) that he said allows him to deport any person who is not a citizen or national of the US.In Khalil’s case, Rubio argued that Khalil’s activism undermined the US goal of combatting antisemitism; the reasoning is currently being challenged in court. But the memo addressing Mahdawi’s case, the New York Times reports, is more specific, noting that Mahdawi had “engaged in threatening rhetoric and intimidation of pro-Israeli bystanders”, saying his activism had undermined efforts to protect Jewish students from violence, and saying it had undermined the Middle East peace process by reinforcing antisemitic sentiment.The state department declined to comment, and Mahdawi’s lawyers did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.According to the court filing challenging Mahdawi’s arrest, he was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank, where he lived until he moved to the US in 2014. He became a lawful permanent resident of the US in 2015.He was expected to graduate Columbia in May, and had been accepted into a master’s program at the university’s school of international and public affairs, according to the court documents.As a student at Columbia, his lawyers say, Mahdawi was “an outspoken critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and an activist and organizer in student protests on Columbia’s campus until March of 2024, after which he took a step back and has not been involved in organizing”. More

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      Harvard’s Decision to Resist Trump is ‘of Momentous Significance’

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      But a fight with the nation’s oldest, richest and most elite university is a battle that President Trump and his powerful aide, Stephen Miller, want to have.Harvard University is 140 years older than the United States, has an endowment greater than the G.D.P. of nearly 100 countries and has educated eight American presidents. So if an institution was going to stand up to the Trump administration’s war on academia, Harvard would be at the top of the list.Harvard did that forcefully on Monday in a way that injected energy into other universities across the country fearful of the president’s wrath, rejecting the Trump administration’s demands on hiring, admissions and curriculum. Some commentators went so far as to say that Harvard’s decision would empower law firms, the courts, the media and other targets of the White House to push back as well.“This is of momentous, momentous significance,” said J. Michael Luttig, a prominent former federal appeals court judge revered by many conservatives. “This should be the turning point in the president’s rampage against American institutions.”Michael S. Roth, who is the president of Wesleyan University and a rare critic of the White House among university administrators, welcomed Harvard’s decision. “What happens when institutions overreach is that they change course when they meet resistance,” he said. “It’s like when a bully is stopped in his tracks.”Within hours of Harvard’s decision, federal officials said they would freeze $2.2 billion in multiyear grants to the university, along with a $60 million contract.That is a fraction of the $9 billion in federal funding that Harvard receives, with $7 billion going to the university’s 11 affiliated hospitals in Boston and Cambridge, Mass., including Massachusetts General, Boston Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The remaining $2 billion goes to research grants directly for Harvard, including for space exploration, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and tuberculosis.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Inside Trump’s Pressure Campaign on Universities

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      As he finished lunch in the private dining room outside the Oval Office on April 1, President Trump floated an astounding proposal: What if the government simply canceled every dollar of the nearly $9 billion promised to Harvard University?The administration’s campaign to expunge “woke” ideology from college campuses had already forced Columbia University to strike a deal. Now, the White House was eyeing the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university.“What if we never pay them?” Mr. Trump casually asked, according to a person familiar with the conversation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private discussion. “Wouldn’t that be cool?”The moment underscored the aggressive, ad hoc approach continuing to shape one of the new administration’s most consequential policies.Mr. Trump and his top aides are exerting control of huge sums of federal research money to shift the ideological tilt of the higher education system, which they see as hostile to conservatives and intent on perpetuating liberalism.Their effort was energized by the campus protests against Israel’s response to the October 2023 terrorist attack by Hamas, demonstrations during which Jewish students were sometimes harassed. Soon after taking office, Mr. Trump opened the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, which is scrutinizing leading universities for potential civil rights violations and serving as an entry point to pressure schools to reassess their policies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      US judge rules Mahmoud Khalil can be deported for his views

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      Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian organizer, is eligible to be deported from the United States, an immigration judge ruled on Friday during a contentious hearing at a remote court in central Louisiana.The decision sides with the Trump administration’s claim that a short memo written by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, which stated Khalil’s “current or expected beliefs, statements or associations” were counter to foreign policy interests, is sufficient evidence to remove a lawful permanent resident from the United States. The undated memo, the main piece of evidence submitted by the government, contained no allegations of criminal conduct.During a tense hearing on Friday afternoon, Khalil’s attorneys made an array of unsuccessful arguments attempting to both delay a ruling on his eligibility for removal and to terminate proceedings entirely. They argued the broad allegations contained in Rubio’s memo gave them a right to directly cross-examine him.Khalil held prayer beads as three attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security presented arguments for his removal.Judge Jamee Comans ruled that Rubio’s determination was “presumptive and sufficient evidence” and that she had no power to rule on concerns over free speech.“There is no indication that Congress contemplated an immigration judge or even the attorney general overruling the secretary of state on matters of foreign policy,” Comans said.A supporter was in tears sat on the crowded public benches as the ruling was delivered.Following the ruling, Khalil, who had remained silent throughout proceedings, requested permission to speak before the court.Addressing the judge directly, he said: “I would like to quote what you said last time, that ‘there’s nothing that’s more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness.’”He continued: “Clearly what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process.“This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family. I just hope that the urgency that you deemed fit for me is afforded to the hundreds of others who have been here without hearing for months.”Khalil, 30, helped lead pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia last year. He was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers in New York on 8 March and transferred to a detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, where he has been detained for over a month. His case was the first in a string of Ice arrests instigated by the Trump administration targeting pro-Palestinian students and scholars present in the US on visas or green cards.The ruling means that Khalil’s removal proceedings will continue to move forward in Jena, while a separate case being heard in federal court in New Jersey examines the legality of his detention and questions surrounding the constitutionality of the government’s claims it can deport people for first amendment-protected speech if they are deemed adverse to US foreign policy.Khalil’s legal team is asking the New Jersey judge to release him on bail so that he can reunite with his wife, who is due to give birth to their first child this month.His lawyers slammed the decision, which they said appeared to be prewritten. “Today, we saw our worst fears play out: Mahmoud was subject to a charade of due process, a flagrant violation of his right to a fair hearing, and a weaponization of immigration law to suppress dissent. This is not over, and our fight continues,” said Marc van der Hout, Khalil’s immigration lawyer.“If Mahmoud can be targeted in this way, simply for speaking out for Palestinians and exercising his constitutionally protected right to free speech, this can happen to anyone over any issue the Trump administration dislikes. We will continue working tirelessly until Mahmoud is free and rightfully returned home to his family and community.”During a short prayer vigil held outside the detention centre on Friday afternoon, a group of interfaith clergy read messages of support. A short statement from Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, who is due to give birth this month, was also delivered in front of reporters.“Today’s decision feels like a devastating blow to our family. No person should be deemed ‘removable’ from their home for speaking out against the killing of Palestinian families, doctors, and journalists,” the statement read.It continued: “In less than a month, Mahmoud and I will welcome our first child. Until we are reunited, I will not stop advocating for my husband’s safe return home.”The New Jersey judge has ordered the government not to remove Khalil as his case plays out in federal court. A hearing in that case is set for later on Friday. More

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      White House may seek legally binding control over Columbia through consent decree – report

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      The Trump administration is considering placing Columbia University under a consent decree, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal, a dramatic escalation in the federal government’s crackdown on the Ivy League institution.The university has already accepted a series of changes demanded by the administration as a pre-condition for restoring $400m in federal grants and contracts that the government suspended last month over allegations that the school failed to protect students from antisemitism on campus.A consent decree – a binding agreement approved by a federal judge – would be an extraordinary move by the Trump administration, which has threatened government funding as a way to force colleges and universities to comply with Donald Trump’s political objectives on a range of issues from campus protests to transgender women in sports and diversity and inclusion initiatives.As a party to the consent decree, Columbia would have to agree to enter it – and the Journal report states that it is unclear whether such a plan has been discussed by the university board.In a statement to the Guardian, the university did not directly address the report. “The University remains in active dialogue with the Federal Government to restore its critical research funding,” a spokesperson said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAccording to the Journal, the proposal comes from the administration’s antisemitism taskforce, composed in part of justice department lawyers, who have reportedly expressed skepticism that Columbia was acting in “good faith”. If Columbia resists, the justice department would need to present its case for the agreement in court, a process that could drag on for years with the university risking its federal funding in the interim.Republicans and the Trump administration have sought to make an example of Columbia University, which was at the center of a student protest movement over Israel’s war in Gaza that broke out on campuses across the country. Last month, federal immigration authorities arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate and prominent Palestinian activist who participated in campus protests. He remains in detention.During a cabinet meeting on Thursday, Trump pressed his education secretary, Linda McMahon, to elaborate on the department’s efforts to withhold federal funds from universities that were “not behaving”.“You’re holding back from $400 Columbia?” he asked McMahon. She nodded and named other schools, noting that the administration had frozen nearly $1bn in funding from Cornell.“We’re getting calls from the presidents of universities who really do want to come in and sit down and come in and sit down and have discussions,” she said. “We’re investigating them but in the meantime we’re holding back the grant fund money.” More

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      Senate Panel Demands Information About Gaza Protest Group at Columbia

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      Lawmakers want the university to turn over all its records about Students for Justice in Palestine. At Northwestern University, two professors sued over a separate request.A Senate committee asked Columbia University to provide extensive information about Students for Justice in Palestine, a group that had been at the center of protests on campus over Israel and Gaza.Information sought by the committee, including “all records in the university’s possession related to SJP and its on-campus activities,” was requested by Wednesday in a letter signed by Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican of Louisiana and the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.After a judge directed the university late Wednesday to say what materials it intended to disclose and to wait to produce them until Friday, the school acknowledged that order and said it planned to turn over “policies and guidance,” but that it would not identify individual students.The Senate committee’s demand was disclosed in a court filing this week connected to a lawsuit filed by seven anonymous students at Columbia and Barnard, its affiliated women’s college, along with Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia student whom the Trump administration is trying to deport.The suit had asked a judge to bar school officials from handing over confidential disciplinary records to lawmakers. On Wednesday, two clinical professors of law at Northwestern University in Illinois filed a similar suit.Republican lawmakers have said they are investigating an epidemic of antisemitism within higher education, but critics have said the Trump administration and its allies are conducting a broad crackdown on political speech.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      To my husband, Mahmoud Khalil: I can’t wait to tell our son of his father’s bravery | Noor Abdalla

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      Exactly a month ago, you were taken from me. This is the longest we have been apart since we got married. I miss you more and more every day and as the days draw us closer to the arrival of our child, I am haunted by the uncertainty that looms over me – the possibility that you might not be there for this monumental moment. Every kick, every cramp, every small flutter I feel inside me serves as an inescapable reminder of the family we’ve dreamed of building together. Yet, I am left to navigate this profound journey alone, while you endure the cruel and unjust confines of a detention center.I could not be more proud of you, Mahmoud. You embody everything I ever hoped for in a partner and the father of my children. What more could I ask for as a role model for our children than a man who, with unwavering conviction, stands up for the liberation of his people, fully cognizant of the consequences of speaking truth to power? Your courage is boundless, and now more than ever, I am in awe of your strength and determination. Your voice, your belief in justice, and your refusal to be silenced are the very qualities that make you the man I love and admire.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. They sit in their ivory towers, scrambling to fabricate lies and distort the truth, throwing accusations like stones in the hope that something will stick. What they fail to realize is that their efforts are futile. Their wrongful detention of you is a testament to the fact that you have struck a nerve. You’ve disrupted the false narratives they’ve worked so hard to maintain, and spoken a truth that they are too terrified to acknowledge. What more do we have than our fundamental right to free speech, when they constantly attempt to strip us of our dignity, telling us we are unworthy of life, of respect, of voice? Now, they seek to punish that very speech, to silence the words that challenge their corrupt and oppressive systems.They are trying to silence you. They are trying to silence anyone who dares to speak out against the atrocities happening in Palestine. But they will fail. We will not be silenced. We will persist, with even greater resolve, and we will pass that strength on to our children and our children’s children – until Palestine is free. I eagerly await the day when I can tell our son the stories of his father’s bravery, of the courage that courses through his veins, and of the pride he should feel to carry Palestinian blood … your blood. And, more than anything, I pray that he will not have to grow up fighting the same fight for our basic freedoms.We will be reunited soon. Until then, I will continue to fight for you, for us and for our family. Your resilience and your courage will guide us through the storm. You are my best friend, my comrade, the very air that sustains me when it feels as though there is none left. I know your spirit is unwavering, that they cannot break you, and that you will emerge from this stronger than ever. I have no doubt that, when you are finally released, you will raise your hands in the air, chanting: “Free Palestine.”

      Dr Noor Abdalla is a dentist and a soon-to-be mother. She is the wife of Mahmoud Khalil More

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      Obama Calls for Universities to Stand Up to Trump Administration Threats

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      Former President Barack Obama urged universities to resist attacks from the federal government that violate their academic freedom in a campus speech on Thursday.He also said schools and students should engage in self-reflection about speech environments on their campuses.“If you are a university, you may have to figure out, are we in fact doing things right?,” he said during a conversation at Hamilton College in upstate New York. “Have we in fact violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion?”“If not, and you’re just being intimidated, well, you should be able to say, that’s why we got this big endowment.”Mr. Obama’s comments came as the Trump administration has threatened universities with major cuts. It took away $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia University in March. It later suspended $175 million to the University of Pennsylvania, and said this week that it was reviewing about $9 billion in arrangements with Harvard and its affiliates.At Harvard, where the university has made efforts to respond to Republican criticism and concerns from Jewish students and faculty, more than 800 faculty members have signed a letter urging their leadership to more forcefully resist the administration and defend higher education more broadly. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More