CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Nestled in between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue in upper Manhattan is Columbia University. The school’s main campus is small; one block wide and seven blocks long. Over the years Columbia has expanded and now owns some of the buildings across the street and blocks away further uptown.
What’s often forgotten is that Columbia is a private university. Its property is private.
That’s what is often overlooked about last year’s pro-Hamas demonstrations, organized by Mohamoud Khalil. His arrest this month is not about free speech. It’s about criminal behavior. He and his fellow demonstrators encamped on private property and refused to leave. That Columbia didn’t have the internal fortitude to enforce its property rights is on them. There demonstrations shouldn’t have been allowed to drag on for weeks, causing graduation ot be cancelled. Khalil and his ilk have to right to be there. The message on night one should have been: leave or be arrested.
Instead the demonstrators took over campus buildings, barricaded themselves inside, refused to let some university employees leave, and vowed to continue their occupation until Columbia divested its portfolio from companies that do business with Israel. All of this is illegal.
For Khalil to say his green card is being revoked because of free speech is disingenuous. He’s in the country as a guest, and he’s been involved in a prolonged string of illegal activity.
I’m not at all confused about who Khalil is. He’s a morally bankrupt activist who’s thrown his lot in with terrorist beheaders, rapists, hostage-takers, and murderers. His response to grievances against Israel is to kill jews. And as long as he sticks only to words – as disgusting as his words are – I’ll have to fight him with words of my own. But, thankfully, when he turns into a lawlessness non-citizen, he can be rounded up and kicked out. It can’t happen soon enough.
Chris Conley
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