The Trump administration has intensified its war on free speech and due process with the kidnapping of Columbia university graduate and U.S. legal permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil. He has not been charged with any crime and the administration has admitted that its attempts to deport Khalil have nothing to do with criminal charges, but rather his constitutionally protected speech. Khalil’s detention is a very serious attack on the basic liberties defined in the U.S. Constitution. It’s also part of a broader pattern in which members of the Trump administration run around the world lecturing on respect for free speech—but, when it comes to speech spoken inside the US that is critical of Israel and its genocidal war against Palestinians, they consider it activity that warrants deportation.
Khalil’s case will set precedent on these issues; Trump is promising that Mahmoud Khalil’s case is the first of many more to come targeting green card holders and other immigrants, and Khalil’s lawyers are already filing multiple lawsuits and seeking to stop his deportation.
Columbia University has been in the spotlight for bending over backwards to do the bidding of Trump. But the White House is also threatening to cancel funding to colleges and universities that do not embrace these violations of the First Amendment and do not adopt extraordinary measures that seek to ban all forms of opposition to Israel’s policies or the ideology of Zionism.
As Khalil is held at a notorious ICE detention facility in Louisiana, we learned of another attack on the free speech of a pro-Palestine activist and scholar at another elite American institution. Yale University, whose federal funding is also under threat, has suspended the international law scholar and outspoken defender of Palestinian rights Dr. Helyeh Doutaghi. She served as the Deputy Director of the Law and Political Economy Project at Yale. On March 2, an AI-powered, far-right website called Jewish Onliner published a story accusing Doutaghi of being a member of the pro-Palestine advocacy organization Samidoun. In October 2024, the U.S. government placed Samidoun on a sanctions list, claiming it is a fundraising front for a designated terrorist organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The Jewish Onliner article characterized Doutaghi as a member of a terrorist organization and of promoting terrorist leaders and activities on social media.
Less than 24 hours after that article was published, Doutaghi says she was placed on leave by Yale’s law school, which revoked her email access and banned her from campus. Yale then launched an investigation into her activities. “This is not an individual case. This is about making sure that no one dares to talk, to challenge, the narratives in corporate media, in Western academia so that they maintain the hegemony and the domination of these narrative,” Doutaghi told Drop Site News. “This is not about me. It's not about Mahmoud Khalil. It really isn't about any of the individuals or the specificity of the cases and the individuals involved. It really is a very much coordinated attack on free speech and about how much the government is terrified of not being able to silence the voices that they've been trying to silence for so many years, but also especially in the past year and a half and they're failing to do so.”
Yale said on Tuesday it is investigating Doutaghi for ties to “potential unlawful conduct” and claimed: “Such an action is never initiated based on a person’s protected speech.”
Drop Site reached out to Yale for comment and will update the story with any reply. "Yale does not initiate investigations based on a person’s protected speech,” the law school said in a public statement. “Nor does Yale take action without conducting an independent review of the matter to determine if further investigation is warranted. In response to allegations about potential unlawful conduct, the appropriate process is to place an employee on a temporary administrative leave while a review is conducted to understand the facts of the matter.”
Doutaghi said that Yale Law School retained lawyer David Ring of the firm Wiggin and Dana, dismissing her concerns that his ”public profile includes 'Israel' listed as a 'service' he provides and whose portfolio boasts advising 'the world’s largest aerospace and defense companies.' Twice appointed by the U.S. State Department as a Special Compliance Officer,” she added, “his career is deeply embedded in the very industries that sustain genocide and war crimes in Palestine."
"When I raised my concerns about the potential conflict of interests posed by his participation in this process,” she added, the law school “dismissed them, stating there was 'no concern with his ability to conduct a fair interview.'"
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