We, the alumni of Columbia University and Barnard College, unequivocally condemn our alma mater’s collaboration with ICE to detain Mahmoud Khalil, and condemn the University’s decisions to capitulate to the Trump administration’s attacks on campus activism, free speech, and higher education. Since Mahmoud’s detention, DHS has visited campus again, seeking to arrest more student activists. Indeed, shortly after, DHS arrested and detained Leqaa Kordia, and the Trump administration revoked the visa of Ranjani Srinivasan.

Mahmoud’s detention represents a dangerous escalation in the state’s crusade against constitutionally protected speech and academic freedom. This cannot be divorced from the University’s relentless targeting and suppression of student activists and speech in support of Palestinian life and freedom. Columbia has summarily suspended and expelled students, effectively fired tenured faculty, and called the police onto campus multiple times to brutalize and arrest its students. Columbia has chosen to disavow the most basic function of a university rather than disclose its investments in companies that sustain Israel’s military occupation of Palestine.

Columbia has forsaken its duty to protect academic freedom and created a grave existential crisis for all institutions of higher learning. By continuing to bow to fascist provocateurs and right-wing donors, Columbia has placed a target on the back of every student, staff, and faculty member speaking out against the genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Most importantly, Columbia’s actions have made countless students vulnerable to abductions ordered by the White House and critically undermined our most fundamental rights to free speech without fear of persecution or incarceration.

We demand that Columbia and Barnard:

• Call for the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil, Leqaa Kordia, and other detained affiliates.
• Protect the principles of academic freedom: Reverse all disciplinary punishments against students and faculty for political speech, including suspensions, expulsions, and degree revocations. Halt all disciplinary hearings and investigations, and begin good-faith engagement with the demands of student organizers. Protect academic departments from government interference with academic inquiry.
• Reaffirm its commitment to being a sanctuary campus: Cease disclosing sensitive student information and end all voluntary cooperation with federal immigration agents. Hire deportation defense immigration attorneys to represent non-citizen students and staff, following the lead of American University, Harvard University, New York University, University of California - Los Angeles, and others, noting that law school clinics and international student offices are insufficient to meet this need.
• Keep law enforcement off campus: Recommit to the pledge made to students after the 1968 campus protests to never invite NYPD or other law enforcement agencies onto campus to target student protesters.
• Divest: from all companies and institutions that profit from Israel’s decades-long system of apartheid and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.