Three weeks after giving birth to my daughter, I was back in class at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs — newborn in my arms — nursing through lectures on human rights at the nexus of technology and international humanitarian law. These were the subjects that taught me what a thriving democracy should look like, what legal protections exist to safeguard our fundamental freedoms and why the right to dissent is a cornerstone of any free society.

With a growing family in student housing, I studied, protested and built community alongside impassioned peers — people who are now leading efforts to defend democracy, navigating humanitarian crises worsened by federal cuts to foreign aid and serving in White House-appointed positions. The School of International and Public Affairs attracts those among us who believe in justice and who are courageous enough to challenge authoritarianism abroad and at home, because that is who we are.

Columbia is quick to claim our successes, to hold us up as proof of its global influence. But when its own students are targeted and brutalized for their beliefs, its silence is deafening.

In many ways, Mahmoud Khalil is like all of my peers. If our time at SIPA had overlapped, we would have studied together, debated policy, shared in dreaming that a better world is possible, caught each other’s eyes across lecture halls when a professor said something problematic.

Khalil was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Saturday at university housing, despite being a permanent U.S. resident with a green card. His wife, a U.S. citizen who is eight months’ pregnant, was not told where he was being taken and is left wondering if he will be there for the birth of their child. Columbia — an institution that prides itself on its commitment to free speech and global democracy — has barely said a word.

Khalil was finally found in an ICE detention facility in Louisiana, initially without knowledge of his lawyer or wife. A judge on Monday said he is to remain in the United States.

His green card wasn’t just revoked — it was terminated without warning, without his being charged and without reasonable access to due process. His crime? Coordinated campus dissent against the harm inflicted on his — the Palestinian — people. Officials said he was targeted for his support for a designated terrorist organization, Hamas.

It’s easy to see this as an isolated case. It is not.

If I learned one thing at Columbia, it’s that strongman politicians around the world love making high-profile examples of individuals while quietly targeting the vulnerable under the radar. They dangle cases like Khalil’s as trophies to distract the public while behind the scenes, the machinery of repression grinds on.

For years, the stage has been set for this moment. Between 2021 and 2024, we saw Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act charges levied by the state of Georgia against activists protesting the construction of “Cop City” in Atlanta. State-sanctioned censorship is undoing centuries of hard-earned rights.

Columbia’s official response to Khalil’s detention — “We will comply with legal requirements” — is not just cowardice. It is permission. It is a green light for this to happen again.

And it will happen again.

Across decades, student-led movements have stood on the right side of history. From the anti-apartheid protests to the civil rights sit-ins; from Tiananmen Square to anti-war protests to the Arab Spring — students have always been at the vanguard of democratic resistance. They have risked everything to demand a better world.

Now, in the United States — the so-called bastion of democracy — the current administration promises us that students are in danger for daring to exercise their fundamental rights.

This disturbing act is what fascism looks like.

If we do nothing, it won’t stop with Mahmoud Khalil. It never does.