Khalil, a US green card holder of Palestinian descent and former graduate student at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), filed the 60-page complaint in the Southern District of New York against the university, its board and SIPA Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo.
The lawsuit alleges “deliberate indifference” to “severe, persistent, and coordinated harassment” directed at Khalil and other students who had spoken publicly in support of Palestinian rights.
Khalil was arrested at his Columbia apartment by federal immigration agents in March 2025, becoming the first in a series of foreign nationals detained by the Trump administration over pro-Palestinian advocacy.
He was released in June 2025 after missing the birth of his first son while in detention and continues to challenge the administration’s efforts to deport him.
In his statement announcing the lawsuit, Khalil said Columbia’s conduct helped create the conditions that enabled his targeting by the Trump administration.
“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.”
Khalil also warned that further legal action could follow.
“Next, I will turn to the hateful individuals at Columbia who were also responsible for what we endured,” he wrote.
Columbia declined to comment on pending litigation but said that “Columbia is committed to protecting our community from discrimination and harassment, and responding promptly and appropriately when concerns arise.”
Meanwhile, the lawsuit details the climate on Columbia’s campus after the Israeli regime’s genocidal war in Gaza.
Columbia students established the university’s first pro-Palestinian encampments in spring 2024, inspiring similar protests at universities across the United States.
According to the complaint, students repeatedly asked university administrators for protection from doxing campaigns in which their names, photographs and personal information were circulated online and displayed on mobile billboard trucks.
Mohammed Ibrahim Zubairi, a Columbia graduate and former president of the Palestine Working Group who is also a plaintiff, said the lawsuit seeks to compel universities to confront their treatment of pro-Palestinian students.
The litigation is an effort to “force a reckoning within these institutions, so that they may recognize they have ended up on the wrong side of history,” Zubairi told the Guardian.
Bhavana Bellamkonda, another plaintiff, said the case concerns the environment that allowed hostility toward pro-Palestinian students to continue.
“For me, this case is about the environment in which the hostility that I and other pro-Palestinian students experienced was able to persist,” she said.
“What we are asking for is not special treatment,” she told the Guardian. “We are asking for the same protections that Columbia students are entitled to under state and federal law, and that Columbia itself has represented that it provides to its tuition-paying students.”
Khalil had been well known to university administrators because of his efforts to mediate between student protesters and Columbia officials.
In the months before his detention, he reported threats, harassment and doxing, including attacks focused on his immigration status.
On March 7, 2025, one day before his arrest, Khalil emailed Columbia’s then interim president, Katrina Armstrong, and other administrators, urging them to take immediate action to protect international students.
“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.”
According to the complaint, Columbia responded to concerns raised by Khalil and other students with disciplinary proceedings and restrictions rather than protection.
The university suspended SIPA’s Palestine Working Group in May 2025, and the suspension remains in effect.
Khalil has also pursued legal action against the Trump administration and several pro-Israel groups, accusing them of conspiring to target him and others because of their advocacy for Palestinian rights.
Separately, he has filed a $20 million false imprisonment and malicious prosecution case against the administration and sought records concerning alleged coordination with groups accused of targeting and doxing pro-Palestinian activists.
Other pro-Palestinian students have likewise sued Columbia, alleging that the university failed to protect them from a hostile campus environment.
“This didn’t begin with me, nor does it end with me,” Khalil said.
“With this lawsuit, we hope to ensure that future generations of Columbia students never have to face this fight.”