Mahmoud Khalil is back in the news and sadly it's not because he's finally been deported. No, he's still here and this week he's suing someone yet again. This time he's suing Columbia, claiming the school failed to protect him and his pro-Hamas comrades.
A group of pro-Palestinian former student activists, including Mahmoud Khalil, sued Columbia University in federal court on Monday, accusing the institution of failing to address the persistent and severe harassment they said they encountered as a result of their advocacy...
“I’m not suing Columbia for what ICE did,” Mr. Khalil said. “I’m suing Columbia for creating the conditions for ICE to do what it did.”...
The lawsuit filed on Monday seeks to hold Columbia responsible for failing to end the harassment it claims was faced by more than a dozen members of the SIPA Palestine Working Group, an advocacy organization that Mr. Khalil led while a student at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs between 2023 and 2025.
The lawsuit charges that when the fliers for the group’s events were torn down, or when group members faced anti-Palestinian or Islamophobic rhetoric from fellow students, Columbia did not do enough to stop it.
One of the specific targets of this lawsuit is Keren Yarhi-Milo, the dean of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). She is an Israeli American and was referred to as "Killer Keren" back when the group Khalil helped lead, CUAD, was cementing toilets on campus. The lawsuit claims Yarhi-Milo was mean to them.
The lawsuit says that the treatment of the group worsened under the current dean of SIPA, Keren Yarhi-Milo, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. After she began as dean in 2022, the group faced extra roadblocks when organizing events compared with other organizations, the lawsuit claims. When its events did take place, Columbia sent security personnel, which pro-Palestinian students found intimidating.
Maybe security personnel were sent because the pro-Hamas mob was taking over buildings, cementing toilets, praising the mastermind of 10/7 and saying explicitly that they supported Hamas and armed resistance. In other words, maybe it was the support for terrorism that led to more security.
Khalil has a long history of sidestepping this issue and the media has an equally long history of helping him do it. He was interviewed by Ezra Klein last year and Klein barely followed up on anything done by the group Khalil helped lead. Here's the closest Klein came in the interview:
I had to prepare for this show — I needed to make sure I knew the really inflammatory things you’ve said.
And I found inflammatory things said by people near you at different times. Or by an Instagram account that’s part of a group you’re a part of. That kind of thing. But I couldn’t find that much from you.
"Part of a group you're a part of" works if you're someone who showed up at one event but really had no input on what was happening. It doesn't work when you're one of the acknowledged leaders of the group. At that point you have responsibility for what it does and what it says. So, for instance, when people in the group leave behind actual Hamas propaganda at an event Khalil organized and at which he was present, you can't really give him a pass on that. Either he supports what Hamas is saying and doing or he doesn't. Khalil wants to have it both ways.
This isn't his first lawsuit. In fact, he seems to have an endless amount of money for these lawsuits. I wonder how that happened? He appealed his case to the full 3rd Circuit Court and back in May they refused to hear it. Then he asked for a stay so he could appeal the previous adverse ruling to the Supreme Court. The 3rd Circuit granted his stay and he's set to finally submit his appeal to SCOTUS next Monday. Originally, his appeal had a deadline of August 20, but he asked for an extension so now he has until next Monday.
He also has another case working its way through the 5th Circuit, but that court tends to be more conservative so he's unlikely to get a win there. The Supreme Court seems to be his best bet. In the meantime, he's filed this new lawsuit against Columbia which seems like another attempt to tie him up in court rulings so that he can argue for stays to his deportation on the grounds that he has active cases under consideration by the courts.
Hopefully, this will all come to an end in the next month or so. Then he'll be deported to Algeria and he can continue his life of pro-Hamas activism there.
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