Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

May 14, 2025

How an Anti-Semitic Fabulist Became a Poster Child for Freedom of Speechtest

The trials of Mohsen Mahdawi.

On April 30, a federal court ordered the release of Mohsen Mahdawi, a graduate student at Columbia University with permanent-resident status who had been detained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security two weeks earlier. Google Mahdawi and you will find a fawning 60 Minutes interview from December 2023, where he speaks about his involvement in anti-Israel protests and makes a point of distancing himself from anti-Semitism. But, Asaf Romirowsky writes, whatever you think about the still-pending legal case against Mahdawi, he is anything but a sympathetic figure:

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