The Knight Institute is defending free speech at a school now synonymous with compromising on it
When he first learned that federal agents had detained Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil in the lobby of his university housing complex, Jameel Jaffer knew he was in for a fight.
Jaffer is the director of a Columbia-affiliated institute devoted to the defense of the first amendment, and Khalil, a green card holder, had been a fixture at the pro-Palestinian encampments on campus. Months earlier, Jaffer’s organization had hosted a symposium about the free speech rights of noncitizens. The institute had been established to defend the very constitutional principles the Trump administration was now openly flouting – and that Columbia seemed too scared to defend.
“We felt this connection to the case, because we’re at Columbia,” Jaffer said. “And we saw this arrest as a serious infringement of first amendment rights.”
Last week, Jaffer’s team of constitutional scholars and lawyers at the Knight First Amendment Institute, along with the law firm Sher Tremonte, scored a landmark victory against the Trump administration when a federal judge in Boston ruled that the detention and attempted deportation of Khalil and other pro-Palestinian students was unconstitutional and intentionally designed to chill free speech. The Trump administration has said it will appeal, with White House spokesperson Liz Huston calling the verdict an “outrageous ruling that hampers the safety and security of our nation”.
