Mahmoud Khalil’s Detention Brings Us to the Edge of a Dystopian Future

U.S. President Donald Trump and his police-state goons are trying to frighten people who dare even come close to people protesting his or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies. This is how dictators intimidate citizens, how freedom dies, and is a clear violation of our Constitution.

And, in all probability, this is just the beginning of what historians will someday define as a very ugly episode in American history.

Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Palestinian green card-holder who graduated from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs with a master’s degree and is married to an American who’s now eight-months pregnant, was seized from his New York residence over the weekend and transported to a barbarous detention facility in Louisiana.

Will students—groaning under the weight of more than a trillion dollars in debt—find the courage to take to the streets like my generation did almost 60 years ago?

He had previously worked for the British Embassy in Beirut, where he’d earned his undergraduate degree in computer science at the Lebanese American University. A legal permanent resident of the United States, he has not been accused of breaking any law.

The day before his seizure, he’d appealed directly to Katrina Armstrong, interim president of Columbia University, according to reporting at Zeteo, writing on March 7, the day before he was snatched away from his family and transported over a thousand miles away:

Since yesterday, I have been subjected to a vicious, coordinated, and dehumanizing doxxing campaign led by Columbia affiliates Shai Davidai and David Lederer who, among others, have labeled me a security threat and called for my deportation.

Their attacks have incited a wave of hate, including calls for my deportation and death threats. I have outlined the wider context below, yet Columbia has not provided any meaningful support or resources in response to this escalating threat.

I haven’t been able to sleep, fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home. I urgently need legal support, and I urge you to intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution—which applies to every “person” in the United States, not just U.S. citizens—is unambiguous:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” (emphasis added)

As Ann Coulter—yes, that Ann Coulter—wrote on Xitter:

There’s almost no one I don’t want to deport, but, unless they’ve committed a crime, isn’t this a violation of the First Amendment?

Speaking of that, first President George Washington noted:

If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the slaughter.

Benjamin Franklin was equally explicit:

Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government: When this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.

But Donald Trump was having none of it; speech with which he disagrees is to be brutally punished:

“ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas student on the campus of Columbia University,” the president bragged on his Nazi-infested social media site. “This is the first arrest of many to come.”

Khalil’s “crime” appears to have been his taking on the role of a high-profile negotiator between protesting students and the university, trying to achieve a peaceful resolution of the anti-Gaza-bombing students’ complaints.

As The New York Times reported:

Mr. Khalil’s arrest drew outrage from students and faculty at the university. Joseph Howley, a classics professor at Columbia, described him as brave, yet mild-mannered and gentle—a “consummate diplomat” who worked to find middle ground between protesters and school administrators.

Mr. Howley, who has known Mr. Khalil for about a year, having met him after Mr. Khalil began speaking out in campus protests, said he was frustrated by depictions of Mr. Khalil as a dangerous person.

“This is someone who seeks mediated resolutions through speech and dialogue,” he said. “This is not someone who engages in violence, or gets people riled up to do dangerous things. So it’s really disturbing to see that kind of misrepresentation of him.”

Dictatorial regimes around the world have a long history of opposing peaceful protest, particularly by students. Young people in Russia who speak out against President Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion and ongoing bombing campaign against civilians in Ukraine, for example, are frequently imprisoned for multiple years in barbaric gulags.

This is because student protests have a long history of successfully producing profound social and political change. It’s unlikely, for example, that the Vietnam War would have resolved when and the way it did without the student protests Louise and I participated in during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Student protests have, for example, a long and storied history including:

• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) protests against segregated lunch counters in the South that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1965;
• The Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley (1964-65), led by Mario Savio, which inspired student movements across the nation;
• Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement, which sparked youth protests across the world;
• The Soweto Uprising of 1976 saw thousands of Black South African students protest against apartheid; the brutal response drew international attention, bolstering the global anti-apartheid movement;
• The Iranian Student Revolution of 1979, which led to the Shah fleeing the country;
• The 1989 student-led Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, which led to a peaceful transition to democracy in that nation; and
• The student-led Hong Kong Umbrella Movement of 2014 which, although it was eventually sadistically crushed, helped awaken the world to the brutality of the Chinese Communist regime.

Even former President Richard Nixon, wannabe fascist that he was, didn’t consider arresting and deporting students for speaking out, although former President Ronald Reagan’s far more subtle solution was to end free college and thus raise the stakes for student protestors who could lose scholarships or get thrown out of school saddled with massive debt and no degree.

Trump decided to up the ante even further with this action against Khalil, hoping it gets wide publicity to cow any other students who may consider protesting any policies of his; it’s extremely unlikely this type of action will be limited to protests against what Human Rights Watch, Médecins Sans Frontières, and Amnesty International have called Israel’s genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing on the West Bank: He doesn’t want students in America protesting in any way at any time.

As a result, we stand on the edge of the fulfillment of Washington’s and Franklin’s explicit warnings of a possible dystopian future.

Will students—groaning under the weight of more than a trillion dollars in debt—find the courage to take to the streets like my generation did almost 60 years ago?

Will Trump next go after student protestors who are American citizens?

Will any elected Republicans find their spine, courage, or principles to defy his takedown of the work our Founders fought and died for?

As they say in the radio business, stay tuned…