Mohsen Mahdawi, who is currently fighting a deportation order, was a leader in the pro-Hamas protests that crippled Columbia’s campus in 2024
Columbia University’s prestigious Knight First Amendment Institute is slated to hold a symposium next week on the eve of 9/11 that will prominently feature “an interview with Mohsen Mahdawi,” the Palestinian Columbia protest leader who was recently exposed for a history of supporting “terrorist organizations” and allegedly claiming during a job interview at a gun shop that “I like to kill Jews.”
Mahdawi’s participation in the event—which will examine how the United States “Forever War” or “War on Terror” has stifled free speech—will test whether Columbia’s support for the First Amendment trumps concerns that it is offering a sympathetic and sanitized forum for a man facing a deportation order and who once promised to “annihilate the Jews.” Columbia University is under scrutiny after entering a $220 million settlement last year with the federal government over allegations it fostered a campus environment dangerous to Jews.
The event will “mark 25 years since 9/11 and the dawn of a seemingly endless proliferation of open-ended conflicts waged against poorly defined enemies in North Africa, the Middle East, South and Central Asia, and even here inside the United States,” according to an online invitation. Speakers, including Mahdawi, will “consider the ongoing impact of the Forever War on democratic rights, including the freedoms of speech and the press.”
Mahdawi, who is currently fighting a deportation order over his support for “pro-terrorist riots” at Columbia, is well positioned to discuss the issue. He served as a central force in Columbia’s pro-Hamas protest movement that advocated violence against Jews and turned the campus into a hotbed of antisemitic fervor. A scathing investigation released Wednesday by two investigative journalists further revealed that Mahdawi made frequent statements that lent “support for terrorists, terrorist organisations, armed violence and those who carried it out.”
Mahdawi will be interviewed on Thursday, Sept. 10—a day before the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks—by Columbia Daily Spectator reporter Daksha Pillai, according to an online schedule. Mahdawi is billed by organizers as “a Palestinian human rights advocate and Columbia University graduate student.” The biography includes no mention of Mahdawi’s longstanding praise for terrorist organizations like Hamas and the jihadist operatives who murder Jews.
“A new low for Columbia – the Knight First Amendment Institute will be hosting anti-American, antisemitic bigot Mohsen Mahdawi on the eve of 9/11,” the advocacy organization StopAntisemitism said Thursday on X. “The same Mohsen Mahdawi who said he liked to kill Jews while shopping for a gun.”
Another X user opined, “Supporting free speech does not mean you need to invite someone who wants to ‘annihilate the Jews’. At the very least, update his conference bio to include ‘Jew hater and terror supporter.'”
The participant list for the symposium at the Knight Institute—which is housed by and received major funding and oversight from Columbia—brims with anti-Israel sentiment. In addition to Mahdawi, it includes several other journalists and activists who’ve accused Israel of genocide or, more specifically, in the case of the nonbinary New York Times writer M. Gessen, compared Gaza to a Nazi-era Jewish ghetto. Representatives from virulently anti-Israel news sites Zeteo and Drop Site News are official participants, as is Lydia Polgreen, the anti-Israel New York Times columnist and former masthead editor. There is no billed participant who has publicly supported Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
The Knight Institute’s director, the fiercely anti-Israel lawyer Jameel Jaffer, who has repeatedly accused Israel of genocide, was a strong supporter of the pro-Hamas protests at Columbia and condemned Columbia administrators and the NYPD for taking steps to restore order.
The Columbia Spectator, the student newspaper, did not respond to a Free Beacon inquiry into whether its reporter will ask Mahdawi about his past remarks or address the findings of this week’s shocking report from investigative journalists David Collier and Rachel Feldman. The Knight Institute and Columbia also did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.
The 100-page investigation unearthed previously unseen statements in which Mahdawi—who’s originally from the West Bank and relocated to Vermont in 2014—promised to “annihilate the Jews,” praised Hamas, honored dead terrorists, and bragged that the Palestinians “have the capacity and conviction to resist, to kill and to wound.”
In a December 2024 Facebook video that was restricted to “friends only,” Mahdawi decried an operation by Palestinian Authority security forces to root out terrorists in the Jenin refugee camp, describing it as “a slap in the face of the resistance, whether armed resistance in the West Bank or Gaza, or the popular resistance that we began and are still engaged in outside the homeland.” Those West Bank refugee camps, he said, serve as the “heart of the resistance and the heart of the struggle,” insisting that armed militants are actually “resistance fighters.”
Shortly after arriving in America in July 2014, Mahdawi praised Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in a Facebook post signed from “United States of America – Vermont.”
“In all the forms of resistance that we seek outside the homeland, we remain dwarfs before the greatness of the lions of al-Qassam, al-Saraya and al-Kata’ib, and before the sacrifices of our brothers in Gaza,” he wrote. “Congratulations to you, [people of] the purest land after Jenin camp; congratulations to you on [making] history and [winning] glory.”
By 2015, meanwhile, Mahdawi was investigated by Vermont police after he applied for a job at a gun shop and allegedly told staff he was trained to use machine guns “to kill Jews while he was in Palestine.” Another witness later recalled him saying, “I like to kill Jews,” though Mahdawi denies the exchange took place.
Mahdawi, 34, while an undergraduate, emerged as an early leader in Columbia’s post-Oct. 7 protest movement. He was detained by ICE agents last year during an appointment to obtain U.S. citizenship, and deportation hearings soon commenced. An immigration judge ordered him to be removed from the country on June 3 of this year, and Mahdawi, currently a graduate student at Columbia’s left-wing international affairs school, is living freely in the United States while his case is appealed.
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