First They Came For Mahmoud Khalil

Last week, Mahmoud Khalil was detained by federal officials, without any accusation of a crime, and was placed in an ICE detention center in Louisiana, where his lawyer would not have jurisdiction to represent him and where his pregnant wife could not visit him.

Khalil, a Palestinian Columbia graduate, was targeted by the Trump administration because he was a key member in organizing the anti-genocide, pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University last year. Khalil, a graduate student at the time, was one of the negotiators between the students and the Columbia administration.

I am working on a long-form piece to unpack this blatant attack on freedom of speech and the drastic implications for education and academic freedom.

In the meantime, I urge all of my readers who are US citizens to do the following:

First, call your representatives to demand that Khalil be released. The Trump administration is targeting him because he disagrees with their policies and is trying to test the boundaries of who they can remove from the country. The more political pressure we have, the greater chance he will be released.

Second, it’s important to not forget the true history of these encampments; that while the media smeared them as “violent,” the only violent actors at the encampments (particularly at Columbia) were the police and university officials, who chose to brutalize students and professors rather than divest from genocide.

Last spring, I spent a significant time at the anti-genocide encampment at George Washington University and wrote extensively about how the encampment represented the best version of our society. The encampments demonstrated the necessity to listen to young people as they are the ones who will raise us (adults) to higher levels of moral and ethical consciousness.

I encourage you to read that full piece, linked here:

Stay tuned for more on Khalil, Montessori, and the fight for a truly interdependent and equitable future.

Photo from a rally organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement, Washington DC, March 2025

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Breaking the Paradigm is a division of Developing Education, which is on a mission to transform education globally to foster human development and flourishing for all people.

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