Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist who became a prominent voice in Columbia University protests against Israel’s illegal military occupation of Palestine and genocide in Gaza, is suing the university, alleging it failed to address harassment, doxxing, and threats against pro-Palestinian protesters and retaliated against them when they reported abuse.
The lawsuit, launched on Monday, comes after Khalil was previously targeted by the Trump administration and held at a Louisiana detention center, despite having a green card and no criminal charges or convictions at the time.
“Columbia turned our lives into hell,” Khalil said in a press conference announcing the lawsuit. “It prioritized the protection and well-being of a subset of students all our concerns. It intentionally created a hostile environment intimidate us, it said that Palestinian students did not matter, that our concerns, our are unworthy of task forces, of investigations protection, because no one could care about us.”
Significance. Khalil’s lawsuit highlights that those participating in the protest were also personally attacked on campus by peers and others online who opposed their on-campus protest.
“In the weeks following October 7, 2023, on-campus harassment and hostility directed towards [Palestine Working Group, a campus group], its members, and other similarly situated students escalated to an extreme level,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit claims the university “facilitated doxxing” by allowing a “public display of targeted students’ names and photographs on websites and on a box truck driving around the Columbia University campus.”
Khalil was a graduate student and participant in the pro-Palestine protests on Columbia University’s campus in October 2023. For months, students camped on the main lawn to pressure the university to disinvest from Israel and express opposition to U.S. military action in Gaza. The protest led to many participants being arrested and suspended from the university and its campus.
Overlooked angle. Khalil has also filed other lawsuits against the government’s role in targeting, silencing, and attempting to deport him for advocating for Palestinian rights.
Khalil was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on March 8, 2025. He was sent to a detention center in Louisiana for 104 days and missed the birth of his child – all for what he claimed were calculated attempts to deport and silence him for his political views and activism.
He was later released from the Louisiana detention center after U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz of New Jersey granted an order to release Khalil on bail.
Power structure. Court filings reveal that Khalil made multiple reports of the harassment incidents over five months to Dean Karen Yarhi-Milo of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
He claims that instead of taking measures, the university “failed to respond to those reports or take appropriate action to extinguish the severe, pervasive, and objectionably offensive harassment targeting Mr. Khalil” and others targeted by harassment.
What experts say. “Institutions like this one only speak a few languages. They understand the language of labor power, although they will fight tooth and nail to try to break it. And they definitely understand the language of litigation,” said Joseph Howley, a classics professor at Columbia University who spoke at a press conference when Khalil announced the lawsuit on Monday.
“So if we hope to see accountability for the harms, the poor judgment of the last few years, then we should all be grateful to our students and colleagues who have the courage, in spite of everything that they’ve endured, to speak up about what they’ve suffered, and seek redress in the courts.”
