By Charles H. F. Davis III, Ph.D.
Originally published at Electronic Intifada on March 21, 2025
Pro-Palestine organizers at the University of Michigan (October, 2023) Photo Credit: Charles H.F. Davis III
For the better part of two academic years, many colleges and universities have reacted rather than responded to organized study and struggle against Israeli genocide in Palestine. Most notably, this has included administrative decisions that encouraged and directed the criminalization and brutalization of involved students, staff and faculty members by campus and municipal police.
In so doing, these institutions have all but abandoned their positions of moral authority in exchange for proximity to profits and political power, creating the conditions that led to the abduction of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian and recent graduate of Columbia University, by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on 8 March.
Consistent with even selective First Amendment advocates and constitutional law experts, what happened to Khalil should be deeply concerning to all of us, especially those in the university.
Minimally, the question of how a legal permanent resident (i.e., a green-card holder) could be summarily detained and held captive by federal agents without due process remains insufficiently answered. And yet his abduction, which occurred despite having expressed concerns to university officials about ICE or other “dangerous individuals” coming to his home, demonstrates how an acute focus on legality obscures the interpretive nature and malleability of the law by authoritative power.
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