Unlike the student protesters, all of whom have legal standing to bring their own cases against the government for their suffering, the plaintiffs here—the American Association of University Professors, three of its chapters, and the Middle East Studies Association—allege a different kind of harm: their inability to fully exercise their right to teach, write, organize, and collaborate with one another, as scholars often do in their various fields, because doing so would put them in the sights of the Administration. Nadia Abu El-Haj, a professor at Columbia, spoke of how Mahdawi, a Palestinian refugee who was studying at the university, told her that he had a feeling he was next after Khalil’s arrest: “He asked me to convince the Columbia University president to move him from his Columbia housing that was off campus to inside the gates, because at that point the university was requiring a judicial warrant for ICE agents to enter the gates of Columbia, and the properties outside were less secure.” (Ultimately, Mahdawi was arrested by ICE in Vermont, after travelling to the state for a scheduled naturalization interview. The government, still committed to the students’ deportations, has objected strenuously to having any recollections of private conversations with the likes of Mahdawi or Öztürk admitted into the record—such as when Öztürk, shortly before her arrest, showed up at her academic adviser’s office, clearly distraught, after seeing her profile on the website for Canary Mission, the anonymously run pro-Israel organization that, as many have suspected and the trial has finally confirmed, fed names to the Administration’s operation against pro-Palestininan students.
Author: Cristian Farias
Published at: 2025-07-21 22:53:59
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