A group of pro-Palestinian former student activists, including Mahmoud Khalil, sued Columbia University in federal court on Monday, accusing the institution of failing to address the persistent and severe harassment they said they encountered as a result of their advocacy.
Mr. Khalil, 31, became the face of Columbia’s pro-Palestinian movement on March 8, 2025, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested him at his Columbia University apartment building while he was attending graduate school, even though he was a legal permanent resident and not accused of a crime. He spent 104 days in detention, missing the birth of his first child.
In the days and weeks before his arrest, he had repeatedly asked Columbia administrators to help protect him against the escalating threats he was receiving for his pro-Palestinian advocacy, he said in an interview on Sunday. He said he did not receive assistance.
Columbia’s failure to support him was part of a pattern of “deliberate indifference” against him and other pro-Palestinian students that began even before the Hamas-led terror attacks of Oct. 7, according to the lawsuit that he and fellow former students filed on Monday in Manhattan.
“I’m not suing Columbia for what ICE did,” Mr. Khalil said. “I’m suing Columbia for creating the conditions for ICE to do what it did.”
Columbia declined to comment on the litigation, but released a general statement in response.
“Creating a campus environment where every member of our community feels welcome, supported and safe is fundamental to who we are as a university,” said Samantha Slater, a Columbia spokeswoman. “Columbia is committed to protecting our community from discrimination and harassment, and responding promptly and appropriately when concerns arise.”
Mr. Khalil, who still faces deportation, emerged as a foil for the Trump administration during its aggressive crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus protests. He has also filed a lawsuit accusing Trump administration officials, pro-Israel groups and a conservative think tank of colluding to suppress his constitutional rights.
In addition to faulting Columbia for its treatment of Mr. Khalil, the lawsuit filed on Monday seeks to hold Columbia responsible for failing to end the harassment it claims was also faced by other members of the SIPA Palestine Working Group, an advocacy organization that Mr. Khalil led while a student at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.
The student group, formed in 2018 to “encourage a more holistic understanding of Palestine,” according to its mission statement, sponsored annual study trips to the Palestinian territories and hosted discussions and lectures. The lawsuit charges that when the fliers for the group’s events were torn down, or when group members faced anti-Palestinian or Islamophobic rhetoric from fellow students, Columbia did not do enough to stop it.
The lawsuit says that the treatment of the group worsened under the current dean of SIPA, Keren Yarhi-Milo, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. After she began as dean in 2022, the group faced extra roadblocks and hurdles when organizing lectures and events compared with other organizations, the lawsuit claims. When its events did take place, Columbia sent security personnel, which pro-Palestinian students found intimidating.
After the Oct. 7 attacks, an outside organization, Accuracy in Media, got a hold of photographs and names of student group members that are accessible only to people with Columbia passwords, the lawsuit said. The students were publicly shamed on a truck circling campus with their faces under the words “Columbia’s Leading Antisemites.”
When students met with Dean Yarhi-Milo to ask that she investigate who leaked the photographs, she initially dismissed their concerns, the lawsuit stated. The photos were removed from the Columbia platform several days later, but the damage was already done.
“It felt like they didn’t bother to look or do the bare minimum,” said Bhavana Bellamkonda, one of the suit’s 11 named student plaintiffs. Websites that Accuracy in Media created that accuse her and other students of being antisemitic remain active.
In a statement, Adam Guillette, the president of Accuracy in Media, said his group had “repeatedly delivered accountability to Columbia’s pro-Hamas radicals,” using language that echoed the Trump administration’s description of pro-Palestinian campus protesters.
Dean Yarhi-Milo did condemn the doxxing campaigns and form an anti-doxxing task force. In 2025, Columbia introduced a comprehensive anti-doxxing and online harassment policy explicitly prohibiting the malicious publication of personal identifying information. She did not respond to a request for comment.
In September 2025, the Palestine Working Group itself was indefinitely suspended. An office at Columbia created after the Oct. 7 attacks to investigate civil rights claims, the Office of Institutional Equity, claimed that the group had co-posted two Instagram posts that contributed to a harassing environment. Mohammed Ibrahim Zubairi, who took over as group president after Mr. Khalil’s detention, said in an interview that Dean Yahri-Milo had particularly objected to being called “Killer Keren” in the posts.
While he did not fully defend the term, Mr. Zubairi said that it was common among protesting students at Columbia to use insults aimed at administrators in their public capacity and that the barring of the group was a disproportionate and unfair punishment. The group has refused to comply with conditions for reinstatement, including revealing who had access to its Instagram account and attending an in-person training, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit claims that Columbia violated Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act by creating a hostile environment for the pro-Palestinian students. It seeks the reinstatement of the Palestine Working Group, monetary damages and access to campus for Mr. Khalil, who has been blocked repeatedly from accessing the main Columbia campus since his release from prison.
This is Mr. Khalil’s second lawsuit against Columbia. The first, filed on March 13, 2025, challenges Columbia’s disclosure of student disciplinary records to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Separately, another group of pro-Palestinian students and faculty sued Columbia in New York State court in August for discriminating against them and failing to protect them from a hostile campus climate after the Oct. 7 attacks.
Mr. Khalil said that Columbia created a volatile situation by not pushing back against claims from Congressional Republicans, the Trump White House and others that its own pro-Palestinian students were dangerous and antisemitic. It is a charge that he and other activists strongly reject.
“I don’t want any student, regardless of their background and identity, to go through the hell that I went through the past three years because of Columbia’s actions,” he said.
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