Pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil says campus advocacy has shifted public perception and encouraged a generation of leaders to question their views on Israel, speaking as he returned to Columbia University for the first time since his arrest.

The 31-year-old Columbia graduate, who became a figurehead of the campus movement that swept the United States in 2024, returned to campus on Tuesday to discuss his new memoir, No Land to Stand On: Notes from Detention marking his first visit since his arrest on March 8, 2025.

“The American public is finally changing, is finally looking at the Palestinian as an equal human,” he told the AFP news agency in an interview.

While Khalil described the event, attended by about 100 people, as a “victory”, he accused university leadership of seeking “to erase me, to erase any Palestinian voices on campus”.

Some Jewish groups on social media opposed his return to campus. In response, a Columbia spokesperson said the university is “committed to rigorous debate, inquiry, and respectful dialogue across differing perspectives”.

“Columbia supports the right of faculty members to organize academic events,” the statement carried by US media read. “An invitation to speak does not signify university endorsement of a speaker’s views.”Khalil helped lead student demonstrations at Columbia in 2024, which became the epicentre of nationwide campus protests against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. He was later arrested by immigration authorities at the height of a federal crackdown on foreign student activists and held for three months without criminal charge, despite holding permanent US residency.

He has repeatedly slammed the university for its handling of the demonstrations which included authorising the New York Police Department to clear protesters from the Manhattan campus. “They chose brutality. They chose repression,” Khalil told AFP.

Columbia maintained at the time that the demonstrations presented a safety threat. Khalil also accused the university of failing to protect him from harassment prior to his detention.

Despite the personal toll, Khalil credited Palestinian student advocacy with driving broader political shifts in the United States, pointing to gains by progressive candidates.

“Also, we can see on the ground that we have more progressive candidates being elected into US Congress and positions of power,” he said, citing candidates like Dr Abdul El-Sayed, running for the US Senate in Michigan, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Mahmoud Khalil arrives for the public swearing-in ceremony for Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York on January 1, 2026 [File: Heather Khalifa/AP Photo] Khalil was released from immigration custody on June 20, 2025, though the Trump administration continues to seek his deportation“A big part of my fight is like fighting for normalcy,” he said. “To go back to being the young father who would go to the park with his son and wife, and no one would bother them.”Despite the ongoing legal battle, he expressed resolve over his public role.

“My fight is not only about whether I get to stay in this country,” Khalil said. “It is about whether, you know, people in this country can speak their minds.”