, published on Mondoweiss,
On May 18, 2025 families and friends gathered at the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew on Manhattan’s Upper West Side to honor expelled and suspended student protesters during an alternative graduation ceremony titled the “People’s Graduation.”
Among those recognized was Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student and fellow protester who was abducted by ICE in March and remains in detention in Louisiana. The name of the event reflected the students’ efforts to create alternative learning spaces and challenge the traditional university model as one deeply embedded with imperialism and the war machine.
The ceremony also paid tribute to the Popular University project in Palestine, an educational initiative in which martyred intellectual Basel al-Araj had played a key role.
Speakers at the event, including Noor Abdalla, celebrated the broader student movement to decolonize education across the nation. Below are the remarks shared on behalf of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest Coalition (CUAD).
To my fellow students and beloved comrades: It is your love of liberation that brings us here today. It is your labor and sacrifice that became the best of teachers and the most beautiful of schools.
Over the past two years, we have stood arm in arm in struggle against Columbia University—a university that has perverted our desire for knowledge and weaponized our labor in service of war.
We have stood proudly in blockades to proclaim that a genocide 77 years in the making must end, and that Palestine must be free. We did so because we know that even when bombed and besieged, Gaza still resists. You too, must resist. History is not a series of accidents. And the future has not yet been decided. It is through our collective action that we bring the potential of freedom closer.
Last month, we transformed Butler Library into the Basel al-Araj Popular University. At every zone we liberated—whether the lawns, Hind’s Hall, or the Al-Araj Popular University—we nurtured an education grounded in a refusal of imperialism and of capitalism. Through sit-ins, encampments, and the disruption of daily operations, our Popular University exerted pressure to divest from Zionism and forced the reality of the genocide in Gaza into public consciousness.
The Popular University added to the many lessons Palestine has taught us. It is not the quality of the educational materials that makes a school. The spirit of education does not lie in state-of-the art technology, glistening classrooms, or impressive buildings. Neither can true learning be confined to the boundaries of Columbia University.
As Basel Al-Araj once said: “If you want to be an intellectual, you have to be engaged. If you don’t want to be engaged—if you don’t want to confront oppression—your role as an intellectual is pointless.”
The spirit of education is thus found in teachers and students who instill in one another that true learning is that which is used in service of truth and justice.
Today, if we continue to resist genocide, despite the sharpening of federal repression, despite the loss of degrees or jobs, it is because we recognize Columbia University for what it is: an arm of the state, tasked with creating the technologies of war, and producing knowledge bolstering imperial violence. It is because we know that US-backed Zionism is a perversion of humanity that must be eradicated. We fight because we believe deeply that our lives and aspirations are not worth more than that of any person in Palestine.
As we push the University to divest, so too do we reckon with new losses. But with every loss, we learn also to let go. To let go of institutions that would teach you death is a profit mechanism, that imperialism is benevolence, that our labor can be parceled and sold for their gain.
What we promise one another is infinitely more beautiful. We promise each other liberation.
We continue to struggle today as students, because we remember Hossam Shabat’s last words:
“I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours, and it has been the highest honor of my life to die defending it and serving its people. I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories-until Palestine is free.”
*Featured Image: The stage at the People’s Graduation featuring a large photo of Mahmoud Khalil, at the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew in New York City on May 18, 2025. (Photo: Nancy Kricorian)
Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) is a coalition of 90+ student organizations working toward achieving a liberated Palestine and the end of Israeli apartheid by urging Columbia University to divest all economic and academic stakes in Israel. CUAD seeks an end to all interlocking systems of oppression through collective action and solidarity with oppressed people worldwide.