Terrorist Sympathizer at Columbia University Must Be Deported
The actions of America’s so-called elite colleges and universities are often so absurd and reflexively anti-American that it seems futile to comment upon them. However, I make an exception this week as it pertains to the plans of the Trump Administration to revoke the green card of Columbia University student, Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent supporter of the terrorist group Hamas, and leader of last year’s anti-Israel protests.
Recall in a 2023 hearing before the U.S. Congress, the presidents of our “elite” institutions of higher education, including Harvard, MIT, and University of Pennsylvania, were unable—after being asked several times to do so—to say that calls for the genocide of Jews violated their student codes.
These three college presidents were pressed about the massive protests on their campuses where chants calling for the genocide of Jews, “intifada,” and “from the river to the sea” were heard. All three awkwardly dodged the question or claimed it did not violate their policies as such, and whether the characterization of such vile hate speech violated school policy depended on the “context,” seeming to suggest that only if gatherings of students chanting genocidal slogans crossed into “conduct” would it be prohibited.
The greatest duplicity was when these school presidents attempted to draw a false moral equivalence between calls for the genocide of Jews—equating it to Islamophobia—despite virtually no evidence Islamophobia is a problem even remotely comparable to the shocking wave of hate directed at Jews. (H. Grossman, Fox News, 12-08-2023) . In fact, “critics say that putting incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia together is to equivocate the two, when Jews are the #1 targets for hate crimes, according to the latest statistics. Jewish people comprise 2.4% of the U.S. population but make up 60% of hate crimes linked to religion.” (Id.).
Can you imagine if Black people were being verbally targeted for slaughter and elimination! What about transgender people? What about the mentally handicapped? What about gay people, Asians, or American Indians? The Leftist uproar would shake the globe. But not for Jews. They can be threatened with murder and only when the knife comes to the throat, it might be condemned at Harvard.
Now, back to Mahmoud Khalil.
As legal scholars have noted, a green card comes with certain legal obligations including the disavowal of terrorism. Under 8 U.S.C. 1182, an alien is inadmissible if he or she “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity, … or is a “representative … of a political, social, or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity.”
As the Wall Street Journal notes, “Mr. Khalil seems to have violated that obligation. He belongs to Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and was a lead negotiator during last spring’s anti-Israel encampment on the campus. Those protests glorified Hamas. CUAD was also a key player in the school’s encampment, which was a ‘Zionist-free zone,’ a designation that excluded Jews from a large part of campus.” (WSJ, March 13, 2025). If that were not enough to have satisfied the legal justification for his deportation, WSJ further notes that “in October 2024, CUAD formalized its support for Hamas and again celebrated the Oct 7, 2023, massacre … stating that ‘Zionists don’t deserve to live.’”
As Josh Hammer writes in RealClearPolitics about the Trump Tower Occupation, “Khalil is a Syrian national and Algerian citizen who was the face of last year’s violent pro-Hamas Columbia University campus riots. He was the spokesman for CUAD, a demented organization which referred to the Oct. 7 slaughter of Israelis as a “moral, military, and political victory” and asserted that it is fighting for nothing less than the “total eradication of Western civilization.”
This is the intellectual rot that has poisoned our American institutions of “higher learning” for decades—masquerading as political correctness—coming home to roost. This is where we are with the Woke American Left. There can be no dissenting thought, no genuine exchange of ideas. Rather, you are either Woke, or you are silenced. Censored. Cancelled. Free speech in the context of genuine academic freedom is largely non-existent in American higher education. Many of us have observed this academic censorship for years but the virulent antisemitism we have witnessed on college campuses over the last two years is a stark and disturbing reminder.
Mahmoud Khalil should be deported immediately.
