Faculty, students, and community members walk out in support of detained Georgetown fellow

Over 130 Georgetown faculty, students, and community members participated in a walkout Tuesday, protesting the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) detainment of Dr. Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown postdoctoral fellow.

Organized by Georgetown Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, the walkout and rally called for the immediate release of Khan Suri, a researcher at Georgetown’s Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU). Khan Suri is legally in the U.S. on a student visa, according to a university spokesperson last week, who also told the Voice they are unaware of Khan Suri engaging in any kind of illegal activity. 

“Badar Khan Suri is an innocent man,” Nader Hashemi, director of the ACMCU, said at the rally. “He has committed no crime. He should have his visa reinstated. He should be allowed to return to his job. He should be immediately reunited with his family.” 

Khan Suri’s arrest is troubling for many students and faculty members on its own, particularly because of his legal status and engaged role in the community. At the walkout, several faculty also voiced concerns that Khan Suri’s arrest belongs to a greater pattern of attacks on academic and ideological freedoms.

“The unlawful detention of our colleague and friend, Badar Khan Suri, is yet another troubling escalation in the repression that students and other activists have faced,” Lahra Smith, an African Studies Program professor, said in a speech. 

Faculty members pointed to the detention of Columbia University graduate student, Mahmoud Khalil, and Cornell doctoral candidate, Momodou Taal, as evidence that Khan Suri’s detainment is not an anomaly. After Khalil’s detention in early March, President Trump said it was the first of “many to come,” according to reporting by the AP. 

“This is a test run, they’re coming after our institution, our scholars, our students,” Courtney Morris (MIMR ’25), a rally attendee, told the Voice. “They began with undocumented people, they’re moving on to people with legal visas, and soon they’ll move on to citizens.”

Khan Suri was arrested because of his social media presence and alleged “close connections” to “a senior advisor to Hamas,” according to a DHS statement on X. He is married to Mapheze Saleh (MAAS ’26), who is a U.S. citizen and Georgetown master’s student. Saleh’s father, Ahmed Yousef, was a “senior political advisor” to Hamas, according to a 2018 interview of Saleh in the Hindustan Times, Yousef has since left Hamas and condemned its Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel.

“Khan Suri’s only crime is that he’s married to a Palestinian,” Hashemi said in his speech. “I’m not exaggerating or being hyperbolic here, that is enough to get you arrested here in the United States.”

A lawsuit, filed on behalf of Khan Suri last week, claims that his detention violates his First and Fifth Amendment rights and is part of the Trump administration’s effort to suppress pro-Palestine activism by “targeting noncitizens for removal based on protected speech.” On Thursday, a federal judge ordered that Khan Suri cannot be deported while the lawsuit is pending.

In a university-wide statement Tuesday afternoon, after the walkout concluded, Interim President Robert Groves expressed concerns about “the circumstances of [Khan Suri’s] detention” and its implications for free speech. Groves also reaffirmed the university’s commitment to academic freedom. 

“Our University must foster and nurture a variety of viewpoints on every issue, in classes, in campus discussions,” Groves wrote. “This is the only way for us to get closer to the truth. To do this, the University, as an academic community, needs students and faculty with different worldviews.”

Faculty members speaking at the walkout called on both Georgetown administration and the broader community to continue to support Khan Suri.

Hashemi and Smith commended the university’s recommitments to academic freedom since Khan Suri’s arrest. They, however, urged Georgetown to actively fight for Khan Suri and ideological freedom on campus. 

Hashemi and others said that Columbia University’s acceptance of overarching policy changes proposed by the Trump administration, in an attempt to regain its federal funding, was shameful. In an interview with the Voice, Hashemi implored Georgetown to remain firm in the face of potential targeting from the federal government.

“When an attack [from the Trump administration] comes, I’m hoping that the university will remember the values, those Jesuit values that the university was built on: freedom of expression, moral responsibility,” Hashemi said in an interview with the Voice. “The worst thing we can do is treat this like a passing moment and be silent.”

But Hashemi and others conceded that standing up to the Trump administration could be difficult for Georgetown—Trump cut $175 million in federal funding from the University of Pennsylvania and $400 million from Columbia to pressure them to make policy changes in recent weeks. In Hashemi’s eyes, strength in numbers is key to resisting efforts to erode academic freedom.  

“We call on Georgetown to work on its own, and in coordination with other universities, to resist outside entities… that relentlessly lobby to censor and shut down speech they disagree with,” Smith said in a speech. 

It isn’t just the responsibility of the Georgetown administration to fight for Khan Suri’s release, according to speakers and rally attendees. 

In an interview with the Voice, Asian American history professor Crystal Luo said that students must recognize that an attack on a faculty member is an attack on them. She argued that when professors do not feel comfortable speaking honestly in or outside their classrooms, the quality of education decreases.

“To do nothing, to put our heads down and go back to work as if everything is normal, is to capitulate, it is to accept that our universities are forever going to be the playthings of right-wing politicians and the rich,” Luo said in her speech. “It is to hope against all evidence that the next suspension, the next canceled project, the next denial of tenure, and the next abduction in the night will come for our neighbors and not for us.”

For some faculty members and students gathered, the stakes are also personal—Khan Suri and his family are integral parts of their Georgetown community.

“I got to know Badar and his family—his wife is a student here—and they became really active members of our Georgetown community and our intellectual community,” Fida Adely, director for the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, said in a speech. “They became some of our best and brightest.”

Towards the end of the rally, one of Khan Suri’s students, Roudah Chaker (CAS ’24, MA ’25) came to speak at the open mic, sharing that Khan Suri, his wife, and children were frequently at the campus mosque and heavily involved in Muslim life at Georgetown. 

“Last Ramadan, Badar was here every day, praying with us, spending time with us, eating Iftar with us, and this Ramadan he is not here,” Chaker told the crowd. “It’s been a heartache on our community.” 

His detainment was a significant loss to her intellectual community as well, Chaker said in her speech, recounting the positive environment he fostered for his class.

“During his arrest, the last thing he told [his wife] was ‘take care of my students,’” Chakar said in her speech. “If this doesn’t tell you the type of person Badar Khan Suri is, then I don’t know what will.” 

Speakers said, however, that even without a personal connection, all Georgetown community members have an obligation to call for Kahn Suri’s release by speaking out, protesting, signing petitions, and taking other actions. 

“How could it be that we had a scholar, a treasured scholar, abducted from Georgetown, and not everyone is showing up?” Morris said.