Fears have emerged among Southern Miss students and faculty after Columbia University expelled students and revoked degrees for participating in pro-Palestine protests. The expulsion followed the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a protest leader.
The long-standing conflict between Palestine and Israel has garnered international attention for decades. The United States has supported Israel since 1948, when it became the first country to recognize Israel as a nation.
In 2024, students at Columbia University held a pro-Palestine protest, initially starting with a tent encampment and later occupying a university building. Mahmoud Khalil, a protest leader, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on March 8.
“We are being censored from talking about the mass killings that have been happening in Palestine and Israel,” said USM Palestinian American student Nadyn Samara. “It’s not about what side we’re on; it’s about the fact that this continues to happen when we all are acknowledging that it’s wrong.”
Columbia University expelled the protesting students after losing more than $400 million in federal funding due to what was described as a “failure to crack down on antisemitism.”
Khalil, a green card holder, faces potential deportation, with Homeland Security alleging his connection to a pro-Palestine terrorist group.
“I think it was unconstitutional to arrest him,” added Samara. “If they arrested him by framing him as part of a terrorist group, then it makes me feel like any one of us international students could be punished in the same way.”
Concerns have also surfaced among U.S. citizens.
“As an American, I am troubled by the fact that a legal resident can be spirited away and detained for reasons that are unstated and unclear; detained for no other reason, it currently seems, than for his political opinions,” said USM history professor Joseph Peterson. “This is a terrible precedent for all of us who cherish civil rights and the rule of law. As a human being, I worry about the suffering these two young parents are enduring right now and about the anxieties that our many wonderful international students may be experiencing. And as a historian who regularly studies and teaches about the dangers of antisemitism, and who has deep admiration for people of Jewish faith and culture, I reject our current presidential administration’s false and harmful definition of antisemitism—that it is somehow antisemitic to have criticisms or concerns about the state of Israel’s policies – a false definition that will make it harder to prevent actual antisemitism today.”
