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The Check-in: The Cost of Free Speech — On Mahmoud Khalil

Telos

Mahmoud Khalil, a legal resident and green-card holder, was arrested without charge or warrant on private grounds for his activism during last year’s encampments in protest of the genocide in Gaza. He is currently detained in Louisiana, alongside a number of other legal residents and foreign national scholars who have also been arrested and detained without charge—including Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish student of Tufts University who was arrested by plain clothes officers in plain sight over the weekend. 

On what legal grounds are his, Rumeysa, and others’ arrests—or rather their abductions, as Greg puts it—sitting on? What does it mean for the status of free speech in our country and the protection of our constitutional rights? And what is our job right now as peacemakers to uphold the constitutional and human rights of all in the interest of our democracy and freedoms? We discuss some tangible next steps, essential talking points, and joint strategies for what to do. These are urgent times—yet they are full of opportunities for peacemakers to show up for justice, peace, and human rights. 

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Read Mahmoud Khalil’s letter from his detention center in Louisiana and watch his arrest

Watch Rumeysa Ozturk’s arrest in Boston.