(19 May 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
++SOUNDBITE SEPARATED BY BLACK FRAMES++
ASSOCIATED PRESS
New York – 19 May 2025
1. STILL, Mohsen Mahdawi, center, holds a photo of Mahmoud Khalil while posing for a photo with demonstrators outside the gates of Columbia University after graduating
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Mohsen Mahdawi, Palestinian activist:
‘The Trump administration wanted to rob me from this opportunity. They wanted me to be in a prison, in prison’s clothes, to not have education and to not have joy or celebration finalizing this journey of getting my BA. So it meant a lot of things to me.
(Reporter: Yeah, yeah, mixed emotions, it sounds like.)
Very mixed emotions."
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Mohsen Mahdawi, Palestinian activist:
"And when I say the university, I must make it clear. The university now is being represented with the senior administration that is selling the soul of this university to the Trump’s administration, participating in the destruction and the degradation of our democracy."
++BLACK FRAMES++
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Mohsen Mahdawi, Palestinian activist:
"When I went on the stage, the message was very clear and loud."
++BLACK FRAMES++
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Mohsen Mahdawi, Palestinian activist:
‘We saw the professors, we saw the faculty cheering up. What they are cheering up for. They are cheering for the idea of justice, for the idea of peace, for the idea of equality, for the idea of humanity, and nothing will stop us from continuing to do that. Nor the Trump administration, nor Columbia University, nor any power in this world will stop us from being and continuing to be humans. So thank you for being the humans."
++SHOT CONTINUES++
6. Pan right then left, people clapping and cheering
STORYLINE:
Less than three weeks after his release from an immigration jail, the Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi strode across the graduation stage at Columbia University on Monday morning, savoring a moment the Trump administration had fought to make impossible.
Draped in a keffiyeh, Mahdawi, 34, paused to listen to the swell of cheers from his fellow graduates. Then he joined a vigil just outside Columbia’s gates, raising a photograph of his classmate Mahmoud Khalil, who remains in federal custody.
“It’s very mixed emotions,” Mahdawi told The Associated Press. “The Trump administration wanted to rob me of this opportunity. They wanted me to be in a prison, in prison clothes, to not have education and to not have joy or celebration.”
Mahdawi, a 34-year-old legal resident of the U.S., was detained during an April 14 citizenship interview in Vermont, part of the widening federal crackdown on pro-Palestinian activists.
He was released two weeks later by a judge, who likened the government’s actions to McCarthyist repression. Federal officials have not accused Mahdawi of committing a crime, but argued that he and other student activists should be deported for beliefs that may undermine U.S. foreign policy.
For Mahdawi, who earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Columbia’s School of General Studies, the graduation marked a bittersweet return to a university that he says has betrayed him and other students.
“The senior administration is selling the soul of this university to the Trump administration, participating in the destruction and the degradation of our democracy,” Mahdawi said.
He pointed to Columbia’s decision to acquiesce to the Trump administration’s demands — including placing its Middle Eastern studies department under new leadership — as well as its failure to speak out against his and Khalil’s arrest.
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