Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist who became a prominent figure in the United States' campus protest movement over the war in Gaza, has filed a civil rights lawsuit against Columbia University in New York City, alleging that the institution enabled systematic discrimination and harassment against pro-Palestinian students and failed to protect them when they reported it.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in Manhattan, accuses Columbia of "deliberate indifference" toward harassment targeting Khalil and fellow members of a pro-Palestinian student group, including the exposure of members' personal information — a practice known as doxing. It further claims the university retaliated against students who reported harassment by characterising their protests as security risks and revising its disciplinary policies so that criticism of the Israeli government on campus could be treated as grounds for punishment. The suit names Columbia, a dean, and the pro-Palestinian group's president, Mohammad Zubairi, as plaintiffs, and seeks damages as well as a court order restoring Khalil's campus access and lifting the suspension of the student group.

At a news conference held at the university, Khalil said the institution had shown bias "rooted in every department and backed by its board of trustees." "We are suing because no student, regardless of their background, should go through the hell that Columbia put us through over all these years," he said. He also accused the university of surveilling pro-Palestinian students and hiring private investigators to monitor him. Khalil said he first began reporting harassment in the spring of 2023, months before the outbreak of the war in Gaza in October of that year.

Khalil rose to international prominence as a spokesperson for student protesters at Columbia, where demonstrations over Israel's military campaign in Gaza sparked solidarity encampments at dozens of universities across the United States and ultimately contributed to the resignation of the university's then-president. A legal permanent resident of the United States, Khalil was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at his campus apartment in March 2025 without being charged with any crime, and spent 104 days in an immigration detention facility in Louisiana, missing the birth of his first child. A federal judge later ordered his release, but his deportation case remains unresolved after an appeals court ruled the lower court lacked jurisdiction.

Columbia declined to comment directly on the lawsuit but said in a statement that "creating a campus environment where every member of our community feels welcome, supported, and safe is fundamental to who we are." The case raises broader questions about the duty of universities to protect students engaged in political advocacy from harassment, and about the boundaries of institutional neutrality during periods of intense campus division.