CALIFORNIA SCHOLARS FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM
March 11, 2025
Katrina Armstrong, President
Columbia University
Daniel Abebe, Dean
Columbia School of Law
Dear President Armstrong and Dean Abebe:
We are writing on behalf of California Scholars for Academic Freedom, a group of over two-hundred scholars from campuses across California, to call upon you to demand the immediate release from ICE custody of your alumnus Mahmoud Khalil. It is obvious that the charges justifying his detention and deportation, and the cancellation of his US permanent residency card, are highly dubious. You have already neglected to act proactively to prevent this dire turn. According to news reports, recently Mr. Khalil wrote to your administration of “a vicious, coordinated, and dehumanizing doxxing campaign led by Columbia affiliates Shai Davidai and David Lederer who, among others, have labeled me a security threat and called for my deportation.” Needless to say, this repeats the pattern observed last spring, when the Columbia administration failed to act as extreme violence was wielded against your students by IDF-affiliated and non-Columbia-affiliated demonstrators, which led to at least ten hospitalizations.
As the ADC has noted, “[w]hat is happening to Mr. Khalil goes against the First Amendment rights enshrined inthe U.S. Constitution. In a time that demands robust public discourse, any infringement on free speech—especially under the pretense of national security or immigration policy—undermines our democratic values.”With its justly renowned history of championing academic freedom under the leadership of faculty such as John Dewey, Columbia has a special responsibility to ensure the free and unhindered consideration of controversial subjects by your students and faculty, and to protect them from repressive measures depriving them of these constitutionally guaranteed rights.For Columbia to turn its back on Mr. Khalil at this critical moment would be to betray its history.
But even more than that, you would ignore that his arrest and immediate removal to a facility in Louisiana have plumbed depths of malice that appear to have been inspired by a foreign nation demonstrably less committed to the equal protection of all under the law. By verbally threatening his wife and depriving her of his support just as she is preparing to give birth to their first child, the behavior of ICE evokes the modus operandi of the Israeli AI program known as “Where’s Daddy,” which has led to the slaughter and maiming of countless fathers and their extended families over the past 17 months across Gaza.
Just as such heinous cruelty has brought about countless miscarriages and deaths of newborns, the shock of losing her partner is certain to place severe stress on this pregnancy. Perhaps that was the point—just as the Israeli government apparently sees every newborn Palestinian a future terrorist to be snuffed out, ICE and the forces colluding with it are engaging in a level of brutality toward Mr. Khalil and countless others that results in the physical destruction of innocent life. Columbia must rise to the moment and repudiate the harm that your affiliates . . . have brought down upon Mahmoud Khalil and his family. If you allow this injustice to go unanswered, you will be opening the door to a future of barbarous lawlessness that . . . will have Columbia’s fingerprints all over it. Please call for his immediate release!
[California Scholars for Academic Freedom is a group of scholars committed to academic freedom and rights to education of faculty and students not only in California and the United States but internationally as well. We recognize that violations of academic freedom anywhere are threats to academic freedom everywhere. California Scholars for Academic Freedom investigates legislative and administrative infringements on freedom of speech and assembly, and it raises the consciousness of politicians, university regents and administrators, faculty, students and the public at large through open letters, press releases, petitions, statements, and articles.]
Sincerely,
Stephen Roddy
Co-Coordinator, Executive Board, CS4AF
Professor
Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
University of San Francisco
Sang Hea Kil
[Currently job suspended for Palestine and signing as an individual and not as a SJSU representative]
Co-Coordinator, Executive Board, CS4AF
Professor
Justice Studies Department
San José State University
Dennis Kortheuer,
Department of History, Emeritus,
California State University, Long Beach
Lisa Rofel
Professor Emerita and Research Professor,
Department of Anthropology
University of California, Santa Cruz
Nancy Gallagher
Professor Emerita, History,
University of California, Santa Barbara
Rabab Abdulhadi
Director, Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies
San Francisco State University
Vida Samiian
Professor & Dean Emerita
CSU Fresno
Richard Falk
Professor of International Law Emeritus,
Princeton University
Chair of Global Law
Queen Mary University London
Sondra Hale
Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Gender Studies,
University of California, Los Angeles
Dina Al-Kassim
Associate Professor
Department of English Literatures and Language
Associate, Institute for Social Justice
Associate, Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies
University of British Columbia, Vancouver
Secretary-Treasurer and Executive Committee Member, American Comparative Literature Association 2020-28
David Klein
Emeritus Professor of Mathematics
California State University Northridge
Rupa Marya
Professor of Medicine
University of California, San Francisco
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