By HOLLY RAMER and AMANDA SWINHART
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — A Palestinian scholar arrested as he was about to finalize his U.S. citizenship accused Columbia College on Thursday of eroding democracy with its dealing with of campus protests towards the Israel-Hamas battle.
Mohsen Mahdawi, 34, who led anti-war protests on the Ivy League faculty in New York in 2023 and 2024, spent 16 days in a Vermont jail earlier than a choose ordered him launched on April 30. He spoke to The Related Press on Thursday, a day after pro-Palestinian protestors clashed with campus safety guards contained in the college’s principal library. No less than 80 folks had been taken into custody, police stated.
Mahdawi stated as a substitute of being a “beacon of hope,” the college is inciting violence towards college students.
“Columbia College is collaborating within the destruction of the democratic system,” Mahdawi stated within the interview. “They’re supporting the initiatives and the agenda of the Trump administration, and they’re punishing and torturing their college students.”
A spokesperson for Columbia College, which in March introduced sweeping coverage adjustments associated to protests following Trump administration threats to revoke its federal funding, declined to remark Thursday past the response of the varsity’s appearing president to Wednesday’s protests.
The appearing president, Claire Shipman, stated the protesters who had holed up inside a library studying room had been requested repeatedly to indicate identification and to go away, however they refused. The college then requested police in “to help in securing the constructing and the security of our group,” she stated in a press release Wednesday night, calling the protest actions “outrageous” and a disruption to college students for ultimate exams.
The Trump administration has stated Mahdawi must be deported as a result of his activism threatens its international coverage objectives, however the choose who launched him dominated that he has raised a “substantial declare” that the federal government arrested him to stifle speech with which it disagrees.
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Mohsen Mahdawi speaks throughout an interview on the ACLU of Vermont on Thursday, Might 8, 2025, in Montpelier, Vt. (AP Photograph/Alex Driehaus)
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Mohsen Mahdawi speaks throughout an interview on the ACLU of Vermont on Thursday, Might 8, 2025, in Montpelier, Vt. (AP Photograph/Alex Driehaus)
Mahdawi, a authorized everlasting resident, was born in a refugee camp within the Israeli-occupied West Financial institution and moved to the USA in 2014. At Columbia, he organized campus protests and co-founded the Palestinian Scholar Union with Mahmoud Khalil, one other Palestinian everlasting resident of the U.S. and graduate scholar who was arrested in March.
On April 14, Mahdawi had taken a written citizenship take a look at, answered verbal questions and signed a doc concerning the pledge of allegiance at an immigration workplace in Colchester when his interviewer left the room. Masked and armed brokers then entered and arrested him, he stated. Although he had suspected a entice, the second was nonetheless stunning, he stated, triggering a cascade of contrasting feelings.
“Mild and darkness, hot and cold. Having rights or not having rights in any respect,” he stated.
Immigration authorities have detained faculty college students from across the nation for the reason that first days of the Trump administration, a lot of whom participated in campus protests over the Israel-Hamas battle. Mahdawi was among the many first to win launch from custody after difficult his arrest. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist group by the USA, Canada and the European Union.
In one other case, a federal appeals court docket dominated Wednesday in favor of Tufts College scholar Rumeysa Ozturk, upholding an order to switch her from a Louisiana detention middle again to New England to find out whether or not her rights had been violated and if she must be launched.
Mahdawi stated his message to the Turkish scholar and others was “keep optimistic and don’t let this injustice shake your perception within the inevitability of justice.”
“Persons are working laborious. Communities are mobilizing,” he stated. “The justice system has signaled to America with my case, and with Rumeysa’s yesterday with the Second Circuit, that justice is functioning and checks and balances remains to be in perform.”
Mahdawi’s launch, which is being challenged by the federal government, permits him to journey outdoors of his house state of Vermont and attend his commencement from Columbia in New York later this month. He stated he plans to take action, although he believes the administration has turned its again on him and rejected the work of a scholar diplomacy council he served on alongside Jewish, Israeli and Lebanese college students.
“I plan to attend the commencement as a result of it’s a message,” he stated. “This can be a message that schooling is hope, schooling is mild, and there’s no energy on the planet that ought to take that away from us.”
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