Mahmoud Khalil headed back to Columbia for book tour, outraging Jewish alumni: Apalled

Anti-Israel rabble-rouser and former Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil is returning to campus after being freed from ICE custody — sparking outrage from Jewish groups.Khalil is appearing on the Ivy League’s campus Tuesday evening to promote his new memoir, “No Land to Stand On,” which documents the 104 days he spent in a federal lockup when he was arrested after participating in the Manhattan school’s explosive 2024 anti-Israel protests.“A revelatory and powerful testament of protest, courage, and imprisonment in America’s deportation regime,” says a flyer for the event, which is hosted by Columbia’s Center for Palestine Studies and the Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism.It’s not the first time the 31-year-old has returned to campus since his arrest — he notably returned a day after he was freed from custody in June 2025 — but campus Jewish groups were nevertheless outraged that a school group had invited him back again.“We are appalled that, after the enormous reputational damage Khalil’s behavior inflicted on the University, the Journalism school would stoop to inviting him back to campus,” said Columbia University Jewish Alumni Association president Ari Shrage.“At a time when Columbia should be working to restore public trust and rebuild its reputation, this decision suggests that the University has learned nothing,” he told The Post.That reputational damage was no small detail — Khalil served as a negotiator for the virulent anti-Israel demonstrators who took over the campus from 2023-2024, and tried to convince the school to divest all its investments from Israel.Those protests resulted in the Trump administration yanking $400 million in funding from the school for failing to protect students from antisemitism, before Columbia backed down and ceded to the president’s demands to help prevent similar demonstrations in the future.Khalil — a Syrian-born permanent US resident, who was studying at Columbia and married...