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Anti-Israel rabble-rouser and former Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil is returning to campus after being freed from ICE custody — sparking outrage from Jewish groups.
Khalil is appearing on the Ivy League’s campus Tuesday evening to promote his new memoir, “No Land to Stand On,” which documents the 104 days he spent in a federal lockup when he was arrested after participating in the Manhattan school’s explosive 2024 anti-Israel protests.
“A revelatory and powerful testament of protest, courage, and imprisonment in America’s deportation regime,” says a flyer for the event, which is hosted by Columbia’s Center for Palestine Studies and the Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism.
It’s not the first time the 31-year-old has returned to campus since his arrest — he notably returned a day after he was freed from custody in June 2025 — but campus Jewish groups were nevertheless outraged that a school group had invited him back again.
“We are appalled that, after the enormous reputational damage Khalil’s behavior inflicted on the University, the Journalism school would stoop to inviting him back to campus,” said Columbia University Jewish Alumni Association president Ari Shrage.
“At a time when Columbia should be working to restore public trust and rebuild its reputation, this decision suggests that the University has learned nothing,” he told The Post.
That reputational damage was no small detail — Khalil served as a negotiator for the virulent anti-Israel demonstrators who took over the campus from 2023-2024, and tried to convince the school to divest all its investments from Israel.
Those protests resulted in the Trump administration yanking $400 million in funding from the school for failing to protect students from antisemitism, before Columbia backed down and ceded to the president’s demands to help prevent similar demonstrations in the future.
Khalil — a Syrian-born permanent US resident, who was studying at Columbia and married to a US citizen — became the face of those movements after he was arrested by the Trump administration, which alleged he’d lied on his green card application.
But he was released after a New Jersey federal judge ruled he’d been unfairly retaliated against by the Trump administration, only for a Louisiana judge to then order his deportation citing alleged green card application omissions.
Khalil has since sued the US government, arguing various rights — including free speech — were violated by the arrest.
Columbia said it was merely supporting such rights by allowing Khalil to speak on campus — insisting the school does not necessarily endorse his views.
“Columbia supports the right of faculty members to organize academic events. An invitation to speak does not signify University endorsement of a speaker’s views,” a school spokesperson said in a statement. “We remain committed to rigorous debate, inquiry, and respectful dialogue across differing perspectives.”