Artists, cultural workers, and historians are mobilizing in protest of the targeted arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian refugee raised in Syria who served as a negotiator between Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and the institution’s administration.
Approximately 3,000 demonstrators marched from Manhattan’s federal courthouse to Union Square calling for the release of Khalil on Monday afternoon, March 10, in a protest attended by the group Artists Against Apartheid (AAA), among others.
Following the protest, dozens of artists and academics, including Palestinian-American artist Samia Halaby, published an open letter condemning the “targeting of immigrant students” through the Manhattan cultural organization People’s Forum.
Khalil, a legal permanent resident who graduated with a Master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in December, was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Saturday night, March 8, while returning from an Iftar dinner to his apartment with his wife, who is eight months pregnant. The New York Civil Liberties Union and the American Civil Liberties Union have criticized Khalil’s arrest as “unlawful,” “discriminatory,” and “intended to intimidate and chill speech.”
“Artists in particular have a very strong tie to the student movement,” Tahia Islam, a visual artist and lead organizer for AAA, told Hyperallergic in a phone interview. “We have a legacy of standing on the right side of history and also of being silenced by institutions, particularly in this moment, for having pro-Palestine stances.”
On Monday evening, protesters chanted slogans for Khalil’s release and held posters bearing his portrait as well as long poppy flower-shaped picket signs, made by AAA members at the People’s Forum during art builds over the past 15 months.
Hundreds of New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers responded to the demonstration, walking with protesters through Lower Manhattan, and approximately halfway through the protest, one demonstrator was arrested to loud boos from the crowds.
An NYPD spokesperson told Hyperallergic that a 21-year-old man was arrested for “obstructing governmental administration” and another 33-year-old man was arrested for “assault.” Hyperallergic has inquired into the manner of assault charged.
Khalil, who is now being held in a Louisiana detention center, told Al Jazeera in a May interview that he abstained from joining Columbia’s spring encampment and related protests, fearing that any involvement could affect his immigration status. Instead, he opted to work as the lead public-facing negotiator between the university and protesters and answered media queries. President Donald Trump has celebrated Khalil’s arrest, branding him an extremist and promising to deport more pro-Palestinian protesters in the future. In the days leading up to his arrest, Khalil asked Columbia’s President Katrina Armstrong to protect him from persistent deportation threats, according to emails obtained by Zeteo.
“I’m especially concerned that universities may think they can turn over a few students, whose political expression they find annoying, to the government in return for the restoration of federal funding,” Northwestern University Art History professor Rebecca Zorach, who signed the People’s Forum open letter, told Hyperallergic in an email.
At Monday’s protest, representatives for the People’s Forum, New York Immigration Coalition, and the New Sanctuary Coalition called for Khalil’s immediate release as a growing crowd began marching uptown at approximately 5pm. Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG), a group advocating for a cultural front in support of Palestine, distributed an issue of their protest newspaper “New York War Crimes” to demonstrators ahead of the march.
“Artists and culture workers and colleagues in colleges and universities need to come together and recognize that an attack on one group is an attack on all,” Zorach said, noting that artists’ skills can be vital to “a broad-based political movement.”
