On March 12, at a rally in front of the New York City courthouse where Mahmoud Khalil‘s hearing took place, classicist and Columbia University associate professor Joseph Howley made the following speech. It has been lightly edited for publication here.
*
My name is Joseph Howley and I am an associate professor of Classics at Columbia University.
The last time I spoke at a press conference was April 18, 2024. That day, NYPD officers in crowd control gear entered our campus for the first time in decades and carried off dozens of students who were peacefully and quietly encamped on one of the enclosed lawns in front of our library, where they threatened no one. As I watched the police action unfold in horror, I received a request to speak at an emergency press conference alongside Mahmoud, who had just been asked to negotiate on behalf of the encampment.
It is always dangerous to speak in public for Palestinian rights, safety, and freedom with your face uncovered and your name declared. You can be sure you will be harassed, doxed, terrorized. People will try to get you fired from your job. For speaking here, I will receive a new round of death threats, slander, complaints to my employer. When I step down from this podium, I will publish these remarks, in order to protect myself from inevitable attempts to misrepresent them.
Mahmoud, as the student negotiator, took these same risks and more. Mahmoud is a man of decency, honor, and kindness. He has distinguished himself, in his work as an advocate and a negotiator, as someone committed to the peaceful resolution of difficult situations and conflicts. He is a consummate diplomat in his disposition and character.
What the Trump government is doing to Mahmoud is obscene. It is unreasonable, intolerable, unconstitutional. So why do they think they can get away with it?
The Trump administration is betting that Americans will happily look the other way as one more Palestinian is victimized here on American soil. They are betting that when you hear Mahmoud’s name, or the word “Palestinian,” the parts of you that make you a thinking and rational and caring person will switch off, and you will believe the worst about him, and you will turn a blind eye to these grave violations of his rights.
After what I’ve seen over the last year and a half, I’m not sure they’re wrong. Anti-Palestinian groups have spent all year casually leveling the most dangerous accusations on the flimsiest of grounds and members of our own community have repeated them. Don’t like seeing a keffiyeh? Call them a terrorist and call the cops. Don’t like their views? Call them antisemitic and get them expelled. Don’t like that your Jewish colleague has the chutzpah to say “Free Palestine?” Report him for Jew hatred to the university task force. Don’t like seeing a broad and diverse movement of courageous young people standing together against the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, funded by American tax dollars? Call your friends in the government and send the feds to their door.
We will not allow a white supremacist president and his party to claim the mantle of Jewish safety as they shred the Constitution.
As an educator, it disgusts me that anyone who wants to be taken seriously in association with a university would deal so ignorantly with language and truth. But more than that, I am ashamed, as a Jewish person, that this kind of slander has found such currency in some parts of the Jewish community, in service of the deeply racist and antisemitic Trump agenda.
Trump’s claim that this atrocity “combats antisemitism” is insulting. We will not take lectures on antisemitism from segregationists and neo-nazis. We will not allow a white supremacist president and his party to claim the mantle of Jewish safety as they shred the Constitution and spin outlandish legal theories to justify the suppression of dissent and the brutalization of those who oppose war and apartheid.
One of the most insidious forms of prejudice toward Jews is the trope of Dual Allegiance, which suggests that we Jews, because of our ethnicity or religion, have secret political commitments that are at odds with or hostile to the communities we live in—that we are not to be trusted, but you should always believe the worst about us and our commitments. When Donald trump sneers at “globalists,” this is what he means.
When I see people unquestioningly trafficking in the wildest assertions about Mahmoud because he is Palestinian, I hear the exact same species of prejudice that drove generations of my own family from their homes in Europe.
Anyone who circulated the lies about Mahmoud that resulted in his detention should be ashamed. And if you find yourself believing whatever someone tells you about Mahmoud because he is Palestinian or because he spoke up against a murderous war, I can only implore you to scrutinize your own soul.
Why are we here? Because we want our friend back. But we are also here because what happens to Mahmoud could happen to any of us. If they can strip the green card from a lawful permanent resident, they can do whatever they want to a citizen. If you are waiting for permission to think of this as a real and actual crisis, this is it. What has been done to Mahmoud goes far beyond whether or not you agree with the cause of Palestinian liberation. Where exactly are we in the poem that begins, “When they came for the Communists, I did not speak out.”?
Well, they’ve already come for the asylum seekers, they’ve come for the migrant families, and now they’ve come for Mahmoud Khalil. It’s not a very long poem. How far down that list do you think you are?
I have been proud to stand as a Jew beside Mahmoud Khalil and call for a free and just and peaceful Israel-Palestine. It is my honor now to stand before you and call on what remains of the United States government to do the right thing and free Mahmoud Khalil.
Thank you.
