Several advocacy groups banded together on the Howe Library steps on March 20 to protest the detainment of Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestine activist and prominent member of the encampment at Columbia University last spring.
U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement arrested Khalil on March 8 according to a March 9 Associated Press article. Trisha McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, described the arrest as being “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism.”
The rally was organized by Students for Justice in Palestine and featured speakers from Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation, Migrant Justice VT, UVM Progressives and UVM Young Democratic Socialists of America.
“We are chanting today for Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia graduate student, who has been targeted by the Trump administration,” said Joe Murphy, an SJP organizer. “They’ve launched a campaign of arrests and deportations against Palestinian activists.”
Helen Scott, a representative from the United Academics Palestine Solidarity Caucus, addressed the crowd.
“The most important thing is that we are standing here, united,” said Scott. “I am proud to be part of these moments of collective organizing.”
Scott said she had seen many protests for social justice on the steps of Howe, yet she never imagined that students would be protesting for the right to protest.
Max Schindler, a member of the Graduate Students United Palestine Solidarity Caucus and a citizen of Israel spoke at the rally, urging the crowd to talk to those in their lives about these issues.
“They are coming after campus activism, they are coming after labor organizing,” Schindler said. “Labor solidarity, solidarity with Palestine, solidarity with migrant workers, is one and the same.”
Murphy called for further organization, acknowledging the large sums that the United States sends to Israel in military aid.
“The only way we can fight fascism and oppression from above, is through solidarity from below,” Murphy said. “In the past three days, the Zionist state of Israel has murdered over 700 people with our tax dollars.”
Murphy later on called upon Jewish students to protest Israel’s actions.
“We say to our Jewish brothers and sisters: you cannot accept this,” he said. “You have the power to stand up, to stand up in your families, in your communities, in your synagogue, in your Hillel, and say ‘I will not accept this, I will not allow you to do this in my name.’”
UVM Students Supporting Israel did not respond to requests for comment on the detainment of Khalil or the protest itself.
Wafic Faour, community activist from the Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation addressed students at the rally, speaking about the intersection of safety for all people being targeted in the U.S.
“They came after the migrants, where were you? They came after the trans [people], where were you? They came after the Palestinians, where are you?” asked Faour.
A speaker from Migrant Justice VT read a statement from their colleague Enrique Balcazar which was translated from Spanish into English.
“We are made to live in fear of being deported, while our labor is exploited,” Balcazar wrote.
Through this letter, Balcazar shared his personal story and its relation to Khalil’s.
“In the same way as Mahmoud Khalil and all the immigrant students, who are fighting against the genocide in Gaza, ICE has used the threat of deportation and detention to keep us silent,” he wrote. “I, Enrique Balcazar, was one of the leaders who was targeted. I went through what Mahmoud Khalil is going through today.”
As the protest took place, an email to students announced that Marlene Tromp will officially be UVM’s 28th president.
“We can see it very clearly from her role at previous universities, particularly Boise State, that she is fully willing to capitulate to political pressures and do anything that the powers that be are demanding of her, at the expense of her university community and students,” said Murphy, following the protest’s conclusion.
While answering questions regarding her minutes-old appointment at a March 20 news conference, Tromp was asked about her experiences as a university president in Idaho, where she said higher education was “under attack.”
“There has been a really dark misconstruction of what the efforts of the university have been in terms of trying to support students […] and that misconstruction and misconstrual have led people to think that the university didn’t have the best interests public universities didn’t have the best interest of students or the states that they were in at heart,” she said.
Tromp said she was excited to be transitioning to a role in Vermont, where she feels the values of higher education are better supported.
“There’s no place that you can be a university president where there aren’t challenges, but to be in an environment where people believe that learning and education matters deeply to the future is really exciting to me,” she said.
In reference to the Mahmoud Kahlil protest, Tromp was asked how she planned to manage similar protests going forward.
“One of the things that is vital at a university is for a university to build a landscape in which people can freely express their issues and bring those ideas forward,” she said. “I hope people from all perspectives will feel like the University of Vermont welcomes their voices, welcomes the conversation of dialog.”
Murphy explained that SJP and other groups intend to continue protesting in the coming months.
“Not just students at UVM, but all across the country, we are on the precipice of a mass understanding of what we need to do and the role that we have to play,” he said.
