superrific
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Watch yourself. The board considers this to be an inappropriate post.
Mahmoud Khalil
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Trump demands unprecedented control at Columbia, alarming scholars and speech groups
Trump demands unprecedented control at Columbia, alarming scholars and speech groups
The Trump administration has delivered an extraordinary ultimatum to Columbia University, threatening to permanently end federal funding to the school unless it cedes control of an international studies department and implements sweeping changes to other policies.
apnews.com
StrangePackage
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He's a moron, evidently.
superrific
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I asked this on a separate thread but it wasn't answered.
Is there nobody out there willing to loan Columbia $400M while they sue over this nonsense? It is plainly illegal.
Is there nobody out there willing to loan Columbia $400M while they sue over this nonsense? It is plainly illegal.
1moretimeagain
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Will need to find someone with the money and the willingness to put themselves in the crosshairs. The latter seems particularly difficult to find lately.
superrific
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Form a dark money organization that doesn't have to reveal its members, like the right-wingers do. $400M isn't actually all that much.
Rust v. Sullivan says Congress can choose to fund doctors who speak with their patients about family planning only, while denying funding to doctors who speak about abortion. Obviously, the government could not directly restrict what the doctors say to their patients (assuming it is medically viable advice), but it could be done indirectly through bribery. Of course, the pulling of funding from Columbia University is a lot different than the Title X issue in Rust, but I also don't trust this Court to view the issue the way you do.
superrific
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I had admittedly forgotten about that case, in part because the Court has been running away from it, but you're right it's relevant. I'm not sure it does much for the administration, though.
The main difference is that the program in Rust was all of one piece. To make a spatial analogy, in that case everything occurred in the doctor's office. The money went to the doctor's office to pay for family planning. The regulation prohibited the doctor from referring to an abortion provider, which is consistent with the program's goals (according to the majority, applying Chevron lol). The court went out of its way to assert that the doctors were not prevented from speaking about abortion outside of the Title X context -- i.e. they could tell anyone about an abortion provider, except during the course of an appointment funded by the federal planning money. Arguably, the regulation was closing a loophole. The idea was that the effectiveness of the program depended on its ability to restrict certain behavior. The court used the analogy that funding a center for promoting democracy doesn't require the government also to fund a center for promoting fascism -- which surely is true (regardless of how well it applied to those facts). Ultimately, the referral restrictions were a part of the terms of service, so to speak.
This case is completely different. When the government says, "you don't get any health research money unless you stop DEI," that's a) punitive; b) targeted; c) not in any way loophole-closing and d) not part of an integrated government program. The government could say, I suppose, "you don't get money for DEI research." But it can't say that "you don't get any money unless you do these unrelated programs." It would be like conditioning funding on endorsing the president.
I see this more like the Obamacare case. There the court said, essentially, "you can't coerce states into compliance by weaponizing the funding." The Obamacare law, after all, said that funding for operating an exchange was dependent on participating in the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, and I believe that part of the law was upheld. What was struck down (7-2) was the provision that said, "you don't get any Medicaid money unless you opt into the expansion," and that was deemed punitive and beyond the government's power. And it all concerned a single program, Medicaid. I know that's a state/federal case and not a free speech case specifically, but I don't think the underlying principles are different.
The proposition that the government cannot achieve through bribery what it cannot achieve through force is well-established and has a long pedigree. It doesn't mean that every program requirement must be viewed through the lens of the First Amendment. What Trump is doing can *only* be viewed through the lens of the First Amendment. There is no connection between NIH funding and the department of middle eastern studies.
Maybe the Supreme Court would fuck this up, but they would have to disregard a lot of law that they like to do so. The "government can't suppress speech through funding" has been a huge theme of this Court's First Amendment jurisprudence. It's not a question of them overturning cases they don't like. They would have to carve out a huge exception, with no real justification, and that could rebound on them.
As a practical matter, Trump's actions here are an attack on higher education. It's dripping with contempt for colleges. I have real trouble believing that will find much sympathy on the court. Barrett taught law for 15 years and isn't going to see universities as enemies. Kavanaugh teaches classes at Harvard and Yale, or did. And all of them graduated from law school (obviously); they did well at law school; they valued their education; and they aren't keen to see educational institutions get destroyed. Except for Thomas and Alito. That's my view.
superrific
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Also, Rust v Sullivan was a facial challenge, not an as-applied; and in that posture, the Court declined to opine on what a doctor would have to do, for instance, in the case of a risk to the mother's health. And this sentence seems relevant too:
"because here the government is not denying a benefit to anyone, but is instead simply insisting that public funds be spent for the purposes for which they were authorized."
However slippery that distinction might be, it can't possibly be argued that's what Trump is doing.
"because here the government is not denying a benefit to anyone, but is instead simply insisting that public funds be spent for the purposes for which they were authorized."
However slippery that distinction might be, it can't possibly be argued that's what Trump is doing.
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“… In the two versions of Khalil currently presented to a federal court in New York, one depicts him as a person whose ongoing presence could have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the U.S.
The other, from letters submitted to the court by friends, colleagues and two Columbia University instructors, is of a Khalil who is a thoughtful, nuanced campus leader skilled at de-escalating tense situations. Their Khalil is someone who would even step in front of an aggressor to protect Jewish students, and who is a believer in nonviolence.
“I can state with full confidence that Mahmoud has never expressed support for Hamas,” wrote one supporter, who described herself as an “American Jewish woman who believes in the importance of Israel as a Jewish homeland.”
… Khalil played a prominent role in the demonstrations, negotiating with the school administration on behalf of pro-Palestinian groups and speaking to the media. His participation might have put him in the crosshairs of those who opposed the student encampments on college campuses.
… Through information in court papers and from his supporters, details of Khalil’s life before his arrival in the U.S. have emerged. He grew up in Syria, where he was born in a refugee camp, according to court papers. His family is Palestinian, and he has Algerian citizenship.
In 2016, he was in Beirut, and he led a three-week volunteer trip to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, part of his work with a nonprofit organization helping to educate Syrian children. Several American volunteers were in the group, including the woman he would later marry, according to a letter from someone who was on the trip.
Khalil earned a computer-science degree from Lebanese American University, and worked at the Syria office in the British Embassy in Beirut, where he managed a scholarship program, according to a profile of him on the Society for International Development website.
By December 2022, Khalil was in the U.S. on a student visa, and preparing to study at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He married his wife, Noor Abdalla, an American dentist who grew up mostly in Michigan, in November 2023. That same year he worked as an intern at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. He applied for and obtained lawful permanent residency status in 2024, court documents show.
While studying at Columbia, Khalil and his wife lived in campus housing, changing apartments as needed. A doorman in a building where they had lived said Khalil used to bring him chicken, tea, fruit and cake to break his fast during Ramadan, a month during which observant Muslims break their fast after sunset. …”
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New York Judge Orders Mahmoud Khalil’s Case Be Moved to New Jersey
The Trump administration is seeking to deport the Columbia student and pro-Palestinian protester
“…
U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman said Wednesday that the law required the case be heard in the venue where Khalil was being held when his attorneys first filed a lawsuit challenging his detention. Though his attorneys have said they believed he was detained in New York at the time the case was filed, he was actually at a facility in New Jersey, according to court documents.
“Put simply, the law precludes this Court from reaching the merits of Khalil’s claims, as serious and important as they may be,” Furman said.
A judge in New Jersey will now address several of the other pending questions in the case, including whether Khalil should be transferred back to New York, or potentially New Jersey, from Louisiana. Furman did, however, maintain his order barring the government from removing Khalil from the U.S. unless and until the New Jersey court rules otherwise. …”
Paine
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Trump’s Deportations Are a Throwback to Red Scare Politics
The detention and threatened deportation of Mahmoud Khalil stands in a long tradition of the US government using border policy as a tool for political control, stretching back to First and Second Red Scare efforts to crack down on left-wing dissent.
jacobin.com
ZenMode
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Letter from Mahmoud Khalil.
I could be blind, but I didn't see it posted during a quick scan.
My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.
Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.
Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.
On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours — I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.
My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.
I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention — imprisonment without trial or charge — to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.
I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.
While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns — based on racism and disinformation — to go unchecked.
Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration's latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students — some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation — and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.
If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change — leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.
The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.
Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.
www.aclu.org
I could be blind, but I didn't see it posted during a quick scan.
My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.
Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.
Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.
On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours — I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.
My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.
I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention — imprisonment without trial or charge — to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.
I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.
While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns — based on racism and disinformation — to go unchecked.
Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration's latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students — some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation — and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.
If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change — leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.
The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.
Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.
A Letter From Palestinian Activist Mahmoud Khalil | ACLU
Khalil, who was unlawfully arrested in retaliation for his advocacy, details this violation of his free speech rights.
www.aclu.org
ZenMode
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Even while detained and facing deportation, he just can't contain his hatred of Israel.
Mahmoud Khalil criticizes Columbia University's response to pro-Palestinian protests, policy changes in op-ed
www.cbsnews.com
Mahmoud Khalil criticizes Columbia University's response to pro-Palestinian protests, policy changes in op-ed
Mahmoud Khalil criticizes Columbia University's response to pro-Palestinian protests, policy changes in op-ed
Activist and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil is speaking out through an op-ed published in the campus newspaper "Columbia Spectator."
www.cbsnews.com
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Agree or disagree with Khalil's perspectives or methods - whatever - but nothing in that letter veers from logic or the man's expressed values. He makes assumptions re: intent vis-a-vis trump admin, Columbia, etc., but those aren't leaps by any stretch, particularly as his views are reinforced while sitting chained in a third world gulag.
A prominent feature of maga is an inability to understand other's lived experiences (or even attempt to understand) and how those experiences shape multitudes of perspectives. Khalil is a case study for just this phenomenon.
A prominent feature of maga is an inability to understand other's lived experiences (or even attempt to understand) and how those experiences shape multitudes of perspectives. Khalil is a case study for just this phenomenon.
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lawtig02
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Wait, were you expecting the unconstitutional rounding up, detention, and threatened deportation of political dissidents would make them just bend the knee??? You must not know much about people who stand on principle. I don’t agree with Khalil on a lot of this, but what Trump is doing here is completely counterproductive.Even while detained and facing deportation, he just can't contain his hatred of Israel.
Mahmoud Khalil criticizes Columbia University's response to pro-Palestinian protests, policy changes in op-ed
Mahmoud Khalil criticizes Columbia University's response to pro-Palestinian protests, policy changes in op-ed
Activist and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil is speaking out through an op-ed published in the campus newspaper "Columbia Spectator."
ZenMode
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He CAN do whatever he wants. When the government is trying to deport you for being pro-terrorist/anti-Semitic.... maybe you tone it down for awhile?
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