About the Rule of Law, Free Speech, and Freedom from Intimidation

Much is being said about the Khalil case.

This is actually not one case. Encompassed in it are several crucial, different issues. It is critical that we keep the strands clear and not allow one of the issues to obscure or override the other. Many have decried manipulation involved in this case, and that too, is an issue. And the manipulation is not from one side only. Being clear headed and resisting manipulation, from whatever source or direction, is critical.

So: to one major issue, not to the exclusion of the others.

There can be no infringement on the rule of law and due process according to established precedent for one person or one group without the rule of law and due process according to established precedent being infringed and degraded altogether, for everyone. There can be no favorites and no political targets in the rule of law. The fact that there are many miscarriages of justice and due process in fact does not justify this ab initio, in this case or any other.

This principle is being tested in Israel as much as in the US. And it holds in both places, and everywhere else.

But let us be very clear about Khalil.

This is not about his “free speech.” It is about his well documented actions to interfere with and shutter the free speech, free exercise of religion, of association, of political beliefs, of identity, and even the freedom of movement and the occupation of physical space, of others.

He is a vigilante who, by physical actions, disrupted academic function and space– the library of Barnard College and the right of students (of whom, he was not one), to use of the library and to pursue their studies, their education– the reason they are at Barnard (or any other place of learning) in the first place. There are, of course, security cameras in libraries and elsewhere. Khalil’s participation in the library invasion is documented. Here is some of that documentation:

BREAKING: Mahmoud Khalil, a student at Columbia, has reportedly been detained by DHS and had his green card revoked.

He was a lead negotiator in the 2024 encampment at Columbia and is seen here participating in last week’s sit-in at Barnard:pic.twitter.com/KH1sSahbpc

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) March 9, 2025

Khalil was a dominant leader in the campus disruptions at Columbia, where he was an M.A. student. The group he helped lead, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), applauded Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, its massacres and hostage-taking, which it termed “an act of Palestinian resistance.” Referring to the attacks by the name Hamas gave them, “the Al-Aqsa flood,” CUAD  applauded how this mass murder spree had “breached Israeli security and made significant military advances” (to what ultimate goal, we might well ask), saying that Oct. 7, 2023 was “a day that will go down in history.” There is no record of Khalil disavowing any such statements. Which may or may not be constitutionally protected speech under US laws.

Actions that interfere with or outright block the right of others to free speech, free inquiry, free association, freedom of movement, are absolutely not constitutionally protected.

The group Khalil led disrupted a class on Israeli history and prevented the professor from teaching and students who chose to be there from learning, blocking their academic freedom.This was not about Khalil or his group’s right to free speech or freedom to advocate a position. It was vigilante action meant to intimidate and shutter others, and it did.

Khalil’s own actions and those of the group he led, he as its most prominent face and voice, both within Columbia’s campus and to the media, were meant to decide on the ground who else’s speech, thinking, free inquiry, and even physical presence were to be tolerated. He did not just advocate that position; he acted to enforce it through physical actions on others and on the property and very function of Barnard College.

The legal status of those actions must be determined in a way that does not compromise the basic rights of everyone and of the rule of law.

But he is not to be made a martyr or hero, least of all, to constitutional freedoms, which either protect everyone or no one. That includes Jews, Israelis, Zionists.

Barnard and Columbia, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, MIT, and many other colleges and universities are responsible for an unfathomable lack of clear, coherent ANTI-BULLYING policies targeting Jews, Israelis, Zionists– or anyone else legitimately on campus; policies including severe consequences, enforced rigorously, consistently, and unambiguously. The right to free speech absolutely does not include the right to shut down the right of others to such speech, to association, advocacy, or physical presence. This is not complicated. Why it is made so in the case of anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist actions on campus, when university toleration of such focused, obsessive, targetting of any other ethnic, religious, or political group is unimaginable, is the question.

It should be needless to say but clearly, is needed to say, that others have the right to deem statements and actions such as those of CUAD and Khalil as anti-Jewish (“antisemitic,” as that unfortunate term puts it). That exercise of free speech is no more |”censorship” than is any other critical opinion. This, standard, too, must be uniform.

Universities are very low hanging fruit, extremely easy to take over, because most students are not interested in radical behavior themeselves or in that of others, and just want to avoid unpleasantness. And some others, as we know of non-students, too, will follow a herd momentum, something organizers can count on if they are relentless enough. A relatively few, highly organized and fanatically determined– and funded (this aspect of it dearly needs investigation)– zealots can stamp the campus environment, intimidate, and control space, as we have seen, knowing that they can abuse university norms of academic freedom and civil law on free speech to terrorize others and shut down their right to academic freedom and free speech and association.

They know they can do that, count on it, make a tradition of it at certain universities and a competitive model for other campuses, because of the woeful history of how universities have handled that behavior in the case of anti-Israel or anti-Zionist organizing. It is classic bullying by vigilantes and bystanding by university administrations, as the bullied are bullied and stigmatized and basic freedoms are trampled. Bullies always know the safe, the soft targets. Shame on the universities for being so– uneducated. And feckless.

Let us be clear: deporting however many foreign students, with or without greencards, whose behavior Trump or another political power decides to target would do nothing to address this central problem. Plenty of US-born students participate in organized anti-Israel, anti-Zionist bullying on US campuses that tolerate this. It is demagoguery to foist this onto an xenophobic agnda.

This is not a choice between supporting what Trump and his appointees are doing and insisting on the rights of Jews, Israelis, Zionists, and anyone else, to study, teach, assemble, advocate, and just be who they are in peace. We must not be railroaded into that false choice.

We must not allow ourselves, as Jews, Israelis, Zionists, to be manipulated because of the real experience and fear of Jew-hatred into supporting assaults on the rule of law. It is precisely that which protects us, whether in the US or in Israel, as Jews, as Israelis, and as citizens of any country.

And we equally must not allow ourselves as Jews, Israelis, Zionists, to be manipulated by our commitment to the rule of law to make a hero of someone who shares jihadist determination and tactics to enforce his positions on others, to demonize them and anathematize their beliefs, and with others,  make what should be a shared environment, toxic and untenable.

Khalil is no hero to free speech (!!) or to the rule of law. He, his fellow vigilantes, and their supporters are the antithesis of those things.

It is not, either/or. We must stay clearheaded about all that is at stake here and not needlessly, and dangerously, choose one or the other.

The issue, in fact, is all of this: the rule of law, free speech, and freedom from intimidation.