Portside

Last Sunday, Noor Abdalla drove from her apartment in Morningside Heights to St. Paul and St. Andrew United Methodist Church, on the Upper West Side. She was with her sister and her month-old son, Deen; the occasion was an alternative graduation ceremony for students at colleges and universities in New York who had been expelled or suspended for protesting Israel’s war in Gaza. Inside the church, preparations were under way, with photographs of the protests projected on a far wall and signs hung elsewhere that read “WAR CRIMINALS OFF OUR CAMPUS” and “FREE PALESTINE.” Abdalla made her way to the pastor’s office, where she left Deen sleeping soundly in his stroller. “Honestly, he’s a really good baby,” Abdalla, who is twenty-eight, told me. “Obviously, I’m biased; I’m his mom. But he’s really good. You know, as long as he’s fed, he’s happy.”

Abdalla, a dentist who grew up in Flint, Michigan, is a U.S. citizen. Her husband, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian who recently graduated from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, is a permanent green-card holder. He was arrested in March, during Ramadan, as the couple returned to their apartment after iftar, and he is currently being held in an ICE detention center in Louisiana. Khalil had been worrying for days that authorities were after him. He was the subject of a doxxing campaign on social media, with one Columbia professor asking Secretary of State Marco Rubio to take “strong action.” But, as Khalil and Abdalla walked home that night, Khalil seemed calm. “That was the first night that he was, like, ‘I’m being dramatic, nothing is gonna happen,’ ” Abdalla told me. Shortly after reaching the lobby of their building, Khalil was handcuffed and led away. Abdalla was eight months pregnant. She hasn’t seen him in person since.

In the weeks that followed, at least seventy-eight more students were arrested as part of the university’s wider crackdown on antiwar protests. In April, Abdalla’s water broke. A friend assisted her during her first contractions. Her mother, who was set to fly in from Michigan that day, arrived a few hours earlier than planned to insure she would be with her daughter at Lenox Hill Hospital when the baby was born. Khalil and Abdalla had narrowed a list of names down to three—Deen was one, and the other options were Younes and Idriss. Through a friend, Khalil had sent her flowers along with a card addressed to “Oum Deen” (“Deen’s mother”). Abdalla wasn’t sure if Khalil, who had been “on the fence” about the name, was joking. Soon after, they spoke on the phone and made a final decision. “I was so scared that he was going to miss the birth of Deen,” she told me. “It was something I would get so emotional about, and it ended up happening, and I was O.K. I survived.”

Khalil is one of several pro-Palestinian voices at U.S. colleges and universities who have been detained since the start of the second Trump Administration. Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish doctoral student and a Fulbright scholar at Tufts University, was arrested in April, apparently for co-authoring an opinion piece about Gaza. (She was released on bail earlier this month.) Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown scholar, and Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia student, were also arrested last month. (Both have since been released; Mahdawi attended his graduation on Monday.) Khalil remains in custody, as the federal judge assigned to his case has not yet ruled on either a bail motion or a motion for a preliminary injunction. Such a ruling could come out at any time. But it could also come too late. The government could decide to preëmptively deport Khalil, whose next immigration hearing is scheduled for Thursday.

While Khalil’s case drew international attention, Abdalla has had to grapple with the anxieties of learning to be a mother. There have been sleepless nights, some difficulties breast-feeding. Meanwhile, she constantly checks her phone for updates on her husband. She says the baby has his father’s temper—and her chin. He enjoys being outside. Abdalla takes him on long walks around the city, though she worries that, one day, she will be recognized, and that it will not be “a very nice interaction.” “I put on a good face for people,” she told me. “I’m trying really hard not to go into a little dark hole of, like, sadness.”

Khalil and Abdalla met in Lebanon, where Abdalla, as a college student, spent a month volunteering with an education nonprofit. Her parents had moved to the United States from Syria—her father for a medical residency, and her mother, later, to teach Arabic. Khalil grew up in a refugee camp in Syria. He had been displaced to Lebanon when he was eighteen, after the outbreak of the Syrian civil war. He taught himself English while working with Syrian refugees in Lebanon and went on to earn a degree in computer science from the Lebanese American University in Beirut. When Abdalla travelled there as a volunteer, Khalil was her main point of contact on the ground. Her father had worked as a taxi-driver before becoming a doctor, and she admired Khalil’s ability to advance his career with few resources. Khalil had once told her that he wouldn’t marry before the age of forty, but, in the years that followed, their friendship evolved. In 2023, they were married.

Studying at Columbia—the home of such Palestinian scholars as Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi—had always been a dream of Khalil’s. (I am a full-time visiting faculty member at Columbia’s journalism school.) He had been admitted to the university’s School of International and Public Affairs in 2022, but he couldn’t afford to attend. The following year, he got a scholarship and enrolled that January, nine months before Hamas launched its attack in southern Israel, on October 7, 2023. Israel’s response, an invasion of Gaza that has killed an estimated fifty-three thousand people, sparked waves of rallies at Columbia. Khalil, known for his charisma and his conciliatory manner, eventually became a mediator, representing the protesters in talks with the university’s administrators. He had made a point of not covering his face during demonstrations. “We’ve talked about the mask thing,” Abdalla told the Times in March. “He always tells me, ‘What I am doing wrong that I need to be covering my face for?’ ”

On March 5th, the Columbia Daily Spectator reported that more than two dozen students had staged a sit-in at Barnard College, demanding the reversal of suspensions issued to classmates who had participated in an earlier protest on campus. Videos of N.Y.P.D. officers arresting students at the sit-in went viral. One of the students was Yunseo Chung, a permanent resident who has lived in the U.S. since she was seven. She is currently being targeted by ICE officers for arrest and deportation; after she sued the Department of Homeland Security, a federal court issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the agency from detaining her.

A day after the arrests at Barnard, a pro-Israeli professor, who had been temporarily barred from the Columbia campus for “threatening behavior” online, posted a video of Khalil during the demonstration. “Illegally taking over a college in which you are not even enrolled and distributing terrorist propaganda should be a deportable offense, no?” he wrote. “Because that’s what Mahmoud Khalil from @ColumbiaSJP did yesterday at @BarnardCollege.” The post was directed at Marco Rubio. Two days later, ICE agents arrested Khalil.

The ceremony at St. Paul and St. Andrew was the work of student organizers. A year earlier, a similar event had taken place following a lockdown at Columbia; the university, after dismantling the Gaza Solidarity Encampments, had cancelled all graduation celebrations. Abdalla told me that Khalil had been so excited about his graduation, which was scheduled for Tuesday, May 20th, that he had bought his cap and gown a year in advance. He was hoping to take photos at the ceremony that he would one day share with his son. “He’s not gonna be able to go to his graduation,” Abdalla said. “It’s just another thing that’s taken away from him.”

Instead, at the People’s Graduation, held in the church’s main sanctuary, Abdalla was the guest of honor. She was there on behalf of her husband but also, she told me, to celebrate the community that has helped her through the most trying period of her life—cooking for her, keeping her company, helping her prepare for the arrival of her son. The other students being honored, and the friends and family who gathered with them, were the people who hoped, along with Khalil, that their organizing would make a difference, would change their institution, would press for change, and would stop the bombs from falling on civilians in Gaza. “The main thing for tonight is I really want to make sure that people know how grateful both me and Mahmoud are,” Abdalla said. “We’re surrounded by so much love and so many people that love us and support us and have been incredible for the past two months.”

Abdalla had prepared her speech a few days earlier; she was no stranger to public speaking. In 2018, she was the commencement speaker at the University of Michigan–Flint, where she graduated with honors. Back then, she spoke about the realities of war in Syria and, also, about her own privilege. “I go to class and I know that I am safe in so many ways,” she said. “I am safe to speak my mind whenever I feel it necessary.” At Michigan, she had participated in on-campus demonstrations against the Syrian war. “As an undergrad student,” she told me, “what can you do? You go to protests, you plan vigils, you make sure that people keep talking about something that you care about and something that’s important.” Now, at the church, she found it difficult to reflect on those ideas. “Is there still a level of freedom of speech that we have here?” she said. “Yes. But when I look at what happened with my husband, and I’m, like, do we really have freedom of speech?”

As Abdalla readied Deen for the ceremony, cheers could be heard in the main hall. The event’s featured speakers, including the Palestinian writer Mohammed el-Kurd, the Tunisian singer Emel Mathlouthi, and the actor Susan Sarandon, were arriving. A box in the room where Abdalla was getting ready contained dozens of pieces of fabric with the names of Palestinians killed in Gaza written on them in both English and Arabic. Abdalla pinned one on herself: “Azhar Ibrahim Ayesh Shaheen age: 22.” Deen was wearing a miniature cap and gown with text printed on the back that read “They tried to bury us but they did not know we are seeds.”

At around 8 P.M., Abdalla entered the room, leaving her son with her younger sister. Onstage, a chair was dressed in a Columbia commencement gown, with a white-and-red kaffiyeh; on the seat was a framed diploma with Mahmoud Khalil’s name on it. Abdalla sat in the front row. Sarandon stepped up to a podium that read “Free Mahmoud.” “Now, it is my deep honor to introduce someone whose presence tonight speaks to something far bigger than a ceremony,” she said. “Noor is not a proxy. She is a force, a scholar, a healer, a woman whose brilliance is matched only by her compassion.”

When it was Abdalla’s turn to speak, she told the audience, “I was not supposed to be standing here today. Mahmoud was.” She paused a few times, overwhelmed by emotions. “To the students here today, you spoke when silence was the easier choice,” she said. “You stood firmer when these institutions failed you. True justice and education must include the freedom to dissent, the right to speak out for human rights, and the courage to stand in solidarity with the oppressed.” Then she read some words from Khalil: “Columbia University, the place where we sought knowledge, justice, and truth, chose silence instead of solidarity. It failed me, but you didn’t.”

After the speakers were done, a roll call of names was announced. A procession of students walked to the stage. Abdalla, holding her baby, went first. She was handed a symbolic diploma on behalf of her husband by Edward Said’s daughter, Najla. She turned, saluted the crowd, and then left through a door at the back of the altar. Other students continued marching, while a vocalist sang “We Shall Overcome.” Abdalla left before the ceremony ended. It had been a long day, and she wanted to take Deen home. “I’m not gonna lie and say it’s easy—it’s not, it sucks,” she told me. “But I’ve had my family here supporting me, helping me.” She added, “You know, we’re taking it one day at a time.” ♦