A Columbia University professor has condemned the ongoing witch-hunt against pro-Palestine activists from both university administrators and the Trump administration, and said he is personally concerned he could be “thrown to the lions” over steps he took during last year’s campus protests.
Bruce Robbins, a professor of humanities at Columbia University, told Middle East Eye’s Real Talk that a chilling effect was taking hold across university campuses following the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a 29-year-old green card holder who played a major role in last year’s pro-Palestine protests.
Khalil, who is Palestinian and recently completed his studies at Columbia in December, was arrested by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on 8 March after he and his pregnant wife, Noor Abdalla—a U.S. citizen—returned home from a dinner in New York City.
Typically, a green card holder can only be deported if they are convicted of a crime. According to court records, Khalil has still not been charged with one.
A DHS spokesperson told reporters on Monday that Khalil had instead been arrested “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting antisemitism”.
“For someone like that to be to be arrested in front of his wife who is eight months pregnant, and [then have officers] drag him off and send him to Louisiana—it’s just a horrifying scenario,” Robbins said.
There is no crime he seems to have committed. He seems to have done nothing but exercise his free speech rights. Columbia should have said, you [arresting officers] can’t come onto our campus and arrest people like this.
It (Columbia) should have stood up to the Trump administration.
Pro-Palestine demonstrations, sparked by Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, became a political flashpoint across the United States in early 2024 whilst Joe Biden was still in the White House.
Solidarity encampments, inspired by those that took place during the Vietnam War, emerged at scores of universities, with the aim of calling for a permanent ceasefire as well as an end to their universities’ complicity in Israel’s war on Gaza.
In several instances, Biden condemned pro-Palestine protesters and accused them of promoting violence and antisemitism.
And in October, a month before the U.S. presidential elections, it emerged that at least 60 universities were facing federal probes over charges ranging from fostering antisemitism or supporting terrorism under the guise of Palestinian solidarity.
At the time, several universities, including Columbia, also came under pressure from wealthy donors who accused the schools of failing to crack down on antisemitism.
“If there had been a real wave of antisemitism at Columbia, that would have been a serious problem,” Robbins said.
And if people were threatening genocide against the Jews, then we would limit their free speech. But there was no wave of antisemitism and no genocidal speech.
There has just been reasonable speech on behalf of justice in Palestine.
‘Show us the evidence’
Attempts by the federal government to curtail free speech came as the conservative Heritage Foundation think-tank launched its “Project Esther” campaign, an initiative aimed at combating anti-Israel bias on campuses.
Central to the campaign was the call for universities to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
The IHRA definition was adopted by the Trump administration in 2019 and later reaffirmed by the Biden administration.
Following Khalil’s arrest, the Trump administration listed nine demands that Columbia must abide by before the government would consider reinstating $400m in grant funding it recently cut from the institution, including the university formalising a definition of antisemitism, a reference to the IHRA definition that Harvard University and New York University also recently adopted.
The White House also demanded that Columbia discipline students involved in last year’s protest at Hamilton Hall and that it place the distinguished Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department under an “academic receivership” for a minimum of five years and install a new department chair.
This would involve the university ceding control of the department and an outsider chair that could be appointed by the government to run it, potentially overseeing everything from curriculum design to the hiring and firing of faculty.
Robbins told MEE it was crucial that the university stand up for its principles and refuse to capitulate to the Trump administration’s undemocratic demands.
The more they offer the Trump administration, the more the Trump administration is going to ask—and the demands in that letter [sent to Columbia] are absolutely unacceptable.
I would like the university, although this is probably a vain hope, I would like them to use the word McCarthyism and to refer to [what is happening] to the kinds of pressures in the 1950s that were put on universities under McCarthy, in the name of anti-communism.
What is astonishing is that the Columbia administration does not call them (the Trump administration) on these things and just say, ‘show us the evidence’. We believe in rationality, evidence, procedure—if there’s evidence, by all means, show it to us. There isn’t any.
Robbins also added that he feared he could be ousted over his actions during last year’s campus student encampments.
In April last year, Robbins took his class to one of the encampments, a decision that resulted in two students making complaints to the university, which have since resulted in a formal investigation.
“I’m waiting to hear whether I will be another person thrown to the lions, as it were, where they can say, here’s somebody who, you know, took his students to the encampment, and we are going to punish him for this somehow,” he said.
I’m awaiting judgment as we speak.
Several professors are currently facing disciplinary actions regarding their support for the pro-Palestine movement, with Columbia University law professor and director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, Katherine Franke, recently forced into retirement because of her activism.