When he first learned that federal agents had detained Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil in the lobby of his university housing complex, Jameel Jaffer knew he was in for a fight.
Jaffer is the director of a Columbia-affiliated institute devoted to the defense of the first amendment, and Khalil, a green card holder, had been a fixture at the pro-Palestinian encampments on campus. Months earlier, Jaffer’s organization had hosted a symposium about the free speech rights of noncitizens. The institute had been established to defend the very constitutional principles the Trump administration was now openly flouting – and that Columbia seemed too scared to defend.
