On the deportation of dissent

When I, an international student in the US, began writing dispatches from the protests at Columbia last year I felt as though good things were once again possible. Not because, as you can read in those posts, I was ever particularly optimistic of success against the power of the state, but because the protests reflected a concerted act; a coming together of groups Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and others too, to exert strategic pressure on an institution indirectly funding the massacre of peoples far away.

Many of the things that I think are good are not possible except by concerted actions of disparate people. It happens that those particular things are also the things most important to me: human freedom; egalitarianism; democracy.

I’m emphasising my own preferences because there are many people who have different preferences, who are not interested in what might be broadly called the liberal society. They value instead hierarchical power expressed through domination and subordination. Those people have the advantage that their goals do not require the coordination of diverse groups: only the expression of the raw power of the strong over the weak.

The coordination of individually-weak students against the institutional might of the Columbia administration posed a genuine threat to the established order. It is only through the lens of threat—that administrators did in fact feel pressure exerted upon them—that the aggression of the organisation can be understood.

Last night, the Department of Homeland Security detained Mahmoud Khalil, lead negotiator of the Columbia Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Khalil is an Algerian citizen of Palestinian origin and an American green-card holder. According to ICE, he was detained at a DHS facility in New Jersey. But when his wife, eight-months pregnant, went to visit him, she was informed he was not there. His location is currently unknown; he has disappeared.

Columbia University security officers speak with Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University on Thursday, March 6. Photo: Janine AlHadidi via Drop Site News

According to Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG), the arresting DHS agents told Khalil that the U.S. Department of State had revoked his student visa. But Khalil does not have a student visa. As a green card holder, he has permanent residency. DHS has given close to no justification for the arrest, except to claim, in a statement to Drop Site News, “Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”

The goal here is the deportation of dissent. In an executive order 10 days ago, the Trump Administration promised to ‘go on offence to enforce law and order’ by ‘cancel[ing] the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses.’ This is a mode of speech suppression that seeks to physically remove the undesirable elements it can, and, through fear, ensure silence in everyone else.

To my mind the arrest of a student on utterly specious grounds by a neo-fascist state, clearly designed to breed a climate of fear among students, calls for the resignation of a university president. That role is untenable so long as it does not involve the ferocious protection of student speech. The same goes for faculty, who last year demonstrated a mixed commitment to the defence of students. The situation requires their concerted action.

I’m not optimistic. The reason the protests made it feel as though good things were again possible was exactly that their example was so exceptional, so rare. The habits of solidarity required for concerted action are gone; the muscles required for effective striking have atrophied. Individual faculty fear the individual costs they will bear by acting. But already they are collectively bearing other costs: the costs of standing by while the liberal university dies on their watch.

Meanwhile the US government is effectively a one party state. The Democrats seem as unwilling as they are unable to amount a defence of liberalism. I suspect that the Trump administration chose to make an example out of Khalil for this reason. They knew no concerted action would come. They knew they could get away with it.