LOUISIANA: Detained Columbia University student activist Mahmoud Khalil appeared briefly Friday in immigration court at a remote Louisiana detention center as his lawyers fight in multiple venues to try to free him.
Khalil, 30, a legal US resident with no criminal record, sat alone next to an empty chair through a brief court session that dealt only with scheduling. His lawyer participated via video.
Khalil swayed back and forth in his chair as he waited for the proceeding to begin in a windowless courtroom inside an isolated, low-slung Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention complex. Ringed by two rows of tall barbed-wire fences and surrounded by pine forests, the facility is near the small town of Jena, roughly 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Louisiana’s capital, Baton Rouge.
Khalil smiled at two observers as they came into the room, where just 13 people ultimately gathered, including the judge, attorneys and court staff. Two journalists and a total of four other observers attended.
By video, lawyer Marc Van Der Hout said he’d just started representing Khalil and needed more time to speak to him, get records and delve into the case. An immigration judge set a fuller hearing for April 8.
Khalil’s lawyers also have gone to federal court to challenge his detention and potential deportation, which looms as his wife, a US citizen, is expecting their first child. A federal judge in New York ruled Wednesday that Khalil can contest the legality of his detention but that the case should be moved to a New Jersey federal court.
The Columbia University graduate student was detained by federal immigration agents on March 8 as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on what he calls antisemitic and “anti-American” campus protests. Khalil served as a spokesperson and negotiator last year for pro-Palestinian demonstrators who opposed Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
Protesters, some of them Jewish, say it’s not antisemitic or anti-American to criticize Israeli military actions and advocate for Palestinian human rights and territorial claims.
However, some Jewish students have said the demonstrations didn’t just criticize Israel’s government but launched into rhetoric and behavior that made Jews feel unwelcome or outright unsafe on the Ivy League campus. A Columbia task force on antisemitism found “serious and pervasive” problems at the university.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has asserted that Khalil organized disruptive protests that harassed Jewish students and “distributed pro-Hamas propaganda.” Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza and attacked Israel in October 2023, is designated by the US as a terrorist organization.
The US government is seeking to deport Khalil under a rarely used statute that allows for removing noncitizens who pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
Khalil, an Algerian citizen who was born in Syria to a Palestinian family, has said in a statement that his detention reflects “anti-Palestinian racism” in the US Before his detention by the government, he said that a Columbia disciplinary investigation was scapegoating him for being an identifiable figure at the protests.
Columbia now is contending with broader pressure to address the Trump administration’s assertions of antisemitism, including demands for unprecedented levels of government control over the private university if it wants to continue receiving federal grants for research and other purposes.
Detained Columbia University student activist Mahmoud Khalil appears in immigration case
https://arab.news/y9zzh
Detained Columbia University student activist Mahmoud Khalil appears in immigration case
- Khalil, 30, a legal US resident with no criminal record, sat alone next to an empty chair through a brief court session that dealt only with scheduling
- He smiled at two observers as they came into the room, where just 13 people ultimately gathered, including the judge, attorneys and court staff
With Saudi businessman’s support, Singapore university maps overlooked Arabia-Asia links
- Muhammad Alagil Chair in Arabia–Asia Studies was established at National University of Singapore in 2014
- It is dedicated to research in the social, cultural, historical and contemporary Arabia-Asia relations
DUBAI: Moving beyond the usual “Middle East vs. West” frameworks, research at Singapore’s top university examines Arabia–Asia connections, shedding new light on centuries of trade, political and cultural ties that were long obscured by European colonial scholarship.
It all began with an endowment from Muhammad Alagil, a Saudi philanthropist and chairman of Jarir Group — one of the Kingdom’s leading retailers.
Located at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore, the Muhammad Alagil Chair in Arabia–Asia Studies was established in 2014 to promote research on the contemporary and historical links between the two regions.
“This history has never been put together, and it’s been there for over a thousand years — and I thought this was missing,” Alagil told Arab News from the sidelines of the “Exploring the Sacred,” hosted by the chair in Singapore on Dec. 4-5.
“Considering that Asia is also rising, ascending, it would also be very good for Saudi and the Arabian Peninsula.”
Arabia and Asia have been linked for centuries through trade, religion, culture, food and kinship, with the connections spanning the Indian Ocean and overland routes between West and East Asia.
“Our research covers a wide range of topics — from economic, political, social and cultural interactions — because we are opening up a new geographical area of focus about which there is sparse knowledge and whose scope is huge, going from Arabia to China,” said Prof. Sumit Mandal, who holds the Muhammad Alagil Chair.
“To my knowledge, there is no comparable program of study anywhere else in the world.”
The research spans multiple regions at the same time — from the spread of Islamic spiritual and legal ideas across the Indian Ocean and its coastal areas, through the formation and survival of Arab diasporas in Asia, as well as trade and political networks created by Arab, Indian, Swahili, and Baloch merchants, lawyers, soldiers, preachers and seamen.
“By opening up scholarly analysis to a transregional scope rather than limiting it to national or regional boundaries, the research opens our eyes to the many and longstanding connections that have existed between Arabia and Asia but were erased with the rise of European colonial expansion,” Prof. Mandal said.
“Hadramis from Yemen, for instance, emerge as significant traders, diplomats, scholars and political leaders across the Indian Ocean, from East Africa to Southeast Asia. Where they were once understood purely through their roles within Indonesia, for instance, we can now see the significance of their connections to Yemen as well. The picture that emerges is broader geographically and deeper horizontally.”
Besides research, the endowment also promotes academics working in the field and aims to empower the growth of new generations of scholars, especially from its focus regions.
It made it possible to bring together a network of scholars, including Engseng Ho — a leading scholar of transnational anthropology, history and Muslim societies, who was the first to hold the Muhammad Alagil Chair.
Another initiative is a project to document the history of Arab communities by digitizing and preserving their manuscripts, especially those at risk of being lost or destroyed.
“They are part of a long tradition of local writing across the Indian Ocean that is disappearing because of neglect and lack of proper conservation,” he said.
“When they disappear, we will no longer be able to tell the story of a big part of centuries of trade, politics and cultural exchange between Arabia and Asia before the 20th century.”
The current focus is on three geographical regions: Malabar in India, Makassar in Indonesia and Hadramout in Yemen.
Mandal sees them as offering a completely new understanding of the worlds of Arabia, Asia and the Indian Ocean, because they are written in the local languages and “represent voices of the region,” he said.
“The emerging Arabia Asia Archives will change how we see Arabia, Asia and the world in the present and the past.”
