Monday’s federal complaint names Columbia board, SIPA dean as defendants
Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University graduate student, used the announcement of a federal civil rights lawsuit Monday to signal that his next legal targets will be individuals at the university, not just the institution itself.
“Next, I will turn to the hateful individuals at Columbia who were also responsible for what we endured,” Khalil wrote in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “This didn’t begin with me, nor does it end with me. With this lawsuit, we hope to ensure that future generations of Columbia students never have to face this fight.”
The Monday lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, was brought by Khalil and members of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) Palestine Working Group. It names Columbia, its board of trustees, and SIPA Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo as defendants.
The complaint accuses the defendants of “deliberate indifference” and of failing to respond to what it describes as “severe, persistent, and coordinated harassment” of Khalil and other students who had been outspoken about Palestinian rights. As campus tensions flared after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza, students repeatedly sought the administration’s support to protect them from doxing campaigns, the complaint alleges. Many had their photos, names, and personal information posted online and on mobile billboard trucks.
Rather than address students’ concerns, the complaint alleges, Columbia subjected them to disciplinary proceedings and restrictions, including the suspension of SIPA’s Palestine Working Group in May 2025 — a suspension that remains in effect.
Khalil, a U.S. green card holder of Palestinian descent, was a graduate student at SIPA when federal immigration agents arrested him at his university apartment in March 2025. He was the first of a number of foreign nationals the Trump administration has detained and sought to deport over their pro-Palestinian advocacy, according to The Guardian. Khalil missed the birth of his first son while in detention; he was released in June 2025 but is continuing to fight the administration’s effort to deport him in a legal battle that is expected to ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Before his arrest, Khalil was well known to university administrators because of his efforts to mediate between student protesters and school officials, the complaint says. In the months leading up to his detention, he reported threats, harassment, and doxing — including attacks targeting his immigration status.
“Columbia laid the groundwork for my targeting by the Trump administration through its deliberate indifference and discrimination aimed at intimidating Palestinian students,” Khalil wrote. “For over two years, we pleaded with Columbia. Columbia did not care. Our safety and our wellbeing did not serve the ideological project its Board of Trustees was protecting, so they traded us away.”
The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal actions Khalil has brought against parties he accuses of retaliating against him for his advocacy. In July, he sued the Trump administration and several pro-Israel groups, accusing them of conspiring to target him and others as punishment for their advocacy. An earlier lawsuit filed in March 2025 sought to stop Columbia from releasing student disciplinary records to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which has led the charge against universities in the aftermath of Israel’s war in Gaza and widespread campus protests in support of Palestinian rights.
“What Mahmoud Khalil endured for speaking up against the genocide in Gaza was unconscionable. And much of that was at the hands of or enabled by Columbia,” Brittany Finley, one of his attorneys, wrote in a press release. “Columbia knew what was happening on its campus, and it chose indifference over action.”
A spokesperson for Columbia declined to comment on the pending litigation but said the university “is committed to protecting our community from discrimination and harassment, and responding promptly and appropriately when concerns arise.”
In the spring of 2024, Columbia students were the first to erect pro-Palestinian encampments on campus, a move The Guardian reported inspired dozens of similar protests across the country. The newspaper said Columbia, once home to cutting-edge scholarship about Palestine, then became the first university to be targeted by the Trump administration in what it described as an ongoing effort to exploit antisemitism accusations to bend universities to the administration’s agenda. Other pro-Palestinian students have also sued Columbia over the university’s alleged failure to protect them from a hostile campus environment.