The Columbia University student and pro-Palestine activist whose immigration arrest and impending deportation have touched off protests in some cities, has filed suit to resist an effort by a U.S. House of Representatives committee to obtain disciplinary records for students who took part in recent campus demonstrations.
Mahmoud Khalil, who is being held in a Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana, and seven pseudonymous Columbia students allege in the suit—which also targets Columbia and Barnard College—that the House committee’s demand for their disciplinary records amounts to “jawboning” their First Amendment rights and is part of an effort to muzzle their speech by exposing them to negative publicity and threats to their safety.