NYU’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors condemns the unlawful abduction and detention of U.S. permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil. Khalil is a recent graduate of Columbia University and was an active participant in Palestine solidarity protests on Columbia’s campus.
On March 8, Khalil, who is Palestinian, was at home with his pregnant spouse in his Columbia-owned apartment when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents entered and arrested him for having expressed pro-Palestinian political views. He has not been charged with any crime. At the time of this writing, ICE is unlawfully detaining Khalil at the Jena/LaSalle Detention Facility in Louisiana. On March 10, a federal judge in New York City temporarily blocked the deportation proceedings, after Khalil’s attorney filed a motion.
This abduction is an egregious violation of Khalil’s First Amendment rights and rights to due process; these rights are shared by all U.S. residents. It also represents an escalation of the racist, Islamophobic and anti-immigrant policies that are the centerpiece of the Trump administration, now repurposed specifically to target and intimidate pro-Palestinian protesters by weaponizing ICE’s deportation apparatus.
Higher education is under attack. Khalil’s abduction follows the announcement last week that the Trump administration will withhold $400 million in funding from Columbia for failing to crack down on alleged campus discrimination, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice’s naming of 10 universities — including NYU and Columbia — that will be investigated for their tolerance of pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Federal officials have publicly threatened student demonstrators with deportation and long-term imprisonment, baselessly equating protected speech with “material support for terrorism.” The equation of opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza with antisemitism or support for Hamas is a violation of basic principles of academic freedom. It also dishonors the many members of NYU’s Jewish community who have voiced such opposition.
NYU AAUP is demanding that President Linda Mills and other members of university leadership take decisive steps to oppose the deployment of deportations and arrests to silence protest. We call upon the university to reassert its public commitments to freedom of speech and to the legitimacy of protest and dissent on campus and off, to take swift action to securely delete surveillance data pertaining to campus protesters and to reaffirm NYU’s status as a sanctuary campus.
NYU leadership must not collaborate with ICE or Trump’s Justice Department. It must take steps to educate and inform all employees of their primary obligations not to violate the constitutional rights of our community members, even if asked to do so by ICE or law enforcement. NYU must act to prevent the use of coercive force to punish, detain and intimidate those in our community whose only “crime” has been to speak out. No one should be imprisoned or deported for exercising their right to political speech.
NYU has the authority and stature to oppose the weaponization of immigration mechanisms as a tool of political persecution. However, the window for action to prevent such unconstitutional abductions on our own campus is rapidly closing. Campus leaders show no signs of the necessary courage to speak up for our community. To the contrary, their silence invites unconstitutional acts on our campus. Across our university, students, coworkers and colleagues are rightly appalled by this silence in the face of the naked deployment of coercion against the vulnerable.
Over the past 18 months, campus leaders have effectively criminalized dissent and protest, like no other time in NYU’s history. They have disproportionately punished students for minimal conduct violations, and subjected faculty, staff and students alike to arrest by the New York City Police Department on three separate occasions. Mills has also colluded with openly Islamophobic outside groups, such as Mothers Against College Antisemitism, who have called for the deportation of student protestors. Most tellingly, our campus remains on permanent lockdown, hyper-surveilled, over-securitized and barricaded. NYU’s only public response to the detention of Khalil has been to shut down the two remaining open spaces on campus, preventing any student gatherings. Far from opposing the Trump agenda, campus leadership has preemptively turned our campus into a would-be crime scene, which now awaits the Department of Justice’s production of the crime.
NYU AAUP has consistently opposed Mills’ past decisions to crack down on campus protest and speech — but we wish to conclude this letter by emphasizing the decisions that the NYU administration must make right now.
To Mills, we say: The lesson to be taken from Columbia is that no amount of collusion with authoritarianism will appease authoritarians. In the days before his arrest, Khalil had asked Columbia for support and protection, which he did not receive. We now ask you to take proactive efforts to support and protect our students, staff and faculty, less they too are unlawfully arrested, detained and deported. It is time to speak out explicitly against the overreach of law enforcement on our campuses.The poet Audre Lorde wrote in 1977 that “your silence will not protect you.” To break the silence in the most fearful times, she said, was our responsibility. You bear this responsibility now. You must take it up on behalf of our students, lest you become a collaborator with the Trump regime. As Columbia alum Sarah Kunstler cautions: “First they came for Mahmoud Khalil. Next they come for us.”
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Contact the NYU American Association of University Professors at [email protected].
