Hendra Wijaya
Prominent Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil, alongside the Palestine Working Group, has filed a civil rights lawsuit against Columbia University, its Board of Trustees, and Keren Yarhi-Milo, the dean of the School of International and Public Affairs. The legal action alleges that the Ivy League institution engaged in systemic discrimination and demonstrated institutional racism against Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students during and following historic campus protests against the war in Gaza.
The formal legal complaint claims that the university demonstrated deliberate indifference toward the severe and escalating harassment directed at pro-Palestinian organizers. According to the filing, school administrators not only failed to safeguard vulnerable students from hostile treatment and public doxxing, but also enacted punitive measures that effectively laid the groundwork for severe federal immigration enforcement actions against student leaders.
Announcing the lawsuit, Khalil publicly condemned the treatment experienced by pro-Palestinian voices on campus, emphasizing that no student, regardless of background or identity, should endure what he described as severe mistreatment by university leadership. He contended that Columbia’s indifference and discriminatory posture fostered a climate intended to intimidate Palestinian scholars, thereby leaving them exposed to heightened scrutiny and external political retaliation.
The lawsuit seeks several formal remedies from the court, including an immediate end to the university’s indefinite suspension of the Palestine Working Group. The plaintiffs are also petitioning the court to compel the university to grant Khalil full access to the campus grounds, implement binding injunctions to block future discriminatory practices, and award financial damages for the emotional, psychological, reputational, and professional harm inflicted, with amounts to be decided at trial.
The Palestine Working Group, established as a recognized student organization in 2018 to advocate for Palestinian human rights, asserts in the filing that it faced ongoing hostility from its inception. However, the lawsuit notes that the intimidation, threats, and coordinated harassment intensified drastically following the outbreak of hostilities on October 7, reaching unprecedented levels across the university community.
Among the specific grievances cited in the complaint is the extensive doxxing suffered by members of the student organization. Activists had their private personal information, home addresses, and contact details publicized online in coordinated efforts to silence their political advocacy. The lawsuit contends that despite repeated appeals for protection, Columbia's administration took insufficient action to protect affected students from the pervasive threats.
Khalil, a graduate of Columbia who was enrolled as a full-time master's student at the School of International and Public Affairs during the unrest, rose to national prominence in the spring of 2024. During that period, Columbia University became the epicenter of a historic wave of campus encampments that quickly reverberated across the United States and spread to academic institutions worldwide.
The demonstrators organized encampments on university grounds to demand an end to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and called on higher education institutions to completely divest their financial endowments from companies linked to the Israeli military apparatus. As tensions mounted between administrators and demonstrators, Khalil served as a chief negotiator and intermediary between the student protest movement and top university administrators.
The campus confrontation reached a pivotal juncture on April 30, 2024, when student demonstrators occupied Columbia's historic Hamilton Hall, renaming the building "Hind’s Hall" in honor of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by the Israeli military in Gaza. While Khalil participated actively as a mediator seeking an administrative resolution, he did not take part in the physical occupation of the facility.
Following the widespread student movement, the federal government escalated punitive measures against student activists. In 2025, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the revocation of educational visas held by hundreds of foreign students and international scholars who had participated in campus advocacy regarding Palestine.
Khalil himself was targeted by federal immigration authorities in March 2025 when plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested him at his residence. Despite holding lawful permanent resident status as a green card holder, he was taken into custody in a confrontation captured on video by his wife, an American citizen who was eight months pregnant at the time.
Federal authorities alleged that Khalil’s campus organizing was aligned with Hamas, using these claims to justify his detention and attempt his formal deportation from the United States. Khalil remained incarcerated in immigration detention facilities for 104 days before securing his release in June 2025, during which time he was forced to miss the birth of his first child.
The legal efforts to expel Khalil ultimately faced a major judicial setback when a federal judge ruled against his deportation. The court found that the Trump administration’s concerted efforts to punish and deport international students and permanent residents for speaking out against the war in Gaza represented an unconstitutional violation of their core fundamental rights.
In his newly launched litigation against Columbia, Khalil links that harrowing federal ordeal directly to the institutional failures and discriminatory climate created by university administrators. The lawsuit asserts that Columbia’s administrative hostility and retaliatory disciplinary measures stripped student organizers of essential institutional protections, directly enabling the government's severe overreach.
As of the time of filing, Columbia University and Dean Yarhi-Milo have not issued a formal public response to the allegations outlined in the lawsuit. The complaint is expected to proceed to federal court, where it will test the legal obligations of academic institutions to shield political minorities from campus-wide harassment and external state targeting.
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