This piece was written by Momodou Taal in December 2024, months after Cornell commenced disciplinary actions against him for his involvement in pro-Palestine protests on campus. In late January 2025, Taal sued the Trump administration for targeting international students.. The Trump administration promptly retaliated by revoking his student visa and putting him in deportation proceedings. After a judge denied Taal’s suit to block his deportation, he voluntarily returned to the United Kingdom on March 31. In this piece, Taal writes that his persecution began at Cornell. This account is just the beginning of his fight for academic freedom.
I was recently at the center of an international media storm. Cornell University was prepared to be the first institution in the United States to deport an international student over pro-Palestinian advocacy. My crime? Remaining a vocal and ardent critic of Zionism and the state of Israel. My continued involvement in protests on campus placed a target on my back. My case garnered international coverage as thousands globally signed a petition demanding the university reverse its decision. If you were to ask the administration, they would claim, “We don’t have the power to deport.” However, I ask here what I asked them at the time: “What is the word for telling someone that they will no longer be allowed to remain in the country even though they have no desire to leave right now?”
On the 23rd of September, I walked toward the university’s administrative building. I had been summoned to meet with a member of the administration after attending an action that brought to a standstill a career fair that featured arms companies supplying Israel, including Boeing and L3Harris. The university had made a decision to crush pro-Palestine protests and wanted to make an example of me. As I made my way I went past the site of a historic Black Power student protest that led to the founding of the first department of Africana studies in the US (the study of Africa and its diasporas), which challenged the foundations of a university made possible by indigenous genocide. If those sites could talk, I suspect they would speak of a collectivist spirit—the kind of spirit that has historically pushed for a more just world. I was reminded of the hopes and dreams of those who believe in the transformative power of education. We had come a long way since those heady days, I told myself.
Despite presenting myself in person, I was told that the administrator would be absent and instead join remotely via Zoom. This was the first step in a cold and cynical process. She appeared on a large wide-screen TV hung on the wall and read a list of supposed violations of the student code of conduct. After the charges were read, she pronounced a judgment without giving me a chance to respond to the allegations. I was set to be de-enrolled from the university, after which I would be given 48 hours to pack my bags and await deportation.
In subsequent meetings, I was labeled a “public health and safety concern” and banned from campus. I could not teach. I was not permitted to use the Muslim prayer facilities. I was even asked to give intimate details of any condition or illness I had before being granted permission to use the health center. Despite there being no evidence of violence on my part, the administration seemed determined to cast me as a threat.
I found it increasingly hard to recognize Cornell as a serious academic institution. On one level, the university’s posture suggested that prioritizing the financial interests of corporations, including weapons manufacturers, outweighed the moral right to protest what I considered to be genocide. On another level, droning administrators clinically doled out disproportionate punishments in scenes reminiscent of Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil.”
The university couldn’t care less if the cause was just, as long as it ensured that the institution maintained its reputational standing and its own internal power structures. It preferred to comply with the status quo and suppress dissent under the guise of maintaining law and order.
The details of my case were widely shared in the media, especially about how the university failed to follow its own procedures in its haste to expel me. The series of miscommunications and misrepresentations painted me as violent, though footage of the career fair disruption at the Statler Hotel clearly demonstrated otherwise.
Cornell’s decisions were also guided by pressure coming from donors and other pro-Israel groups.
Under mounting pressure from political forces (Congress and AIPAC), universities have become targets for crackdowns on pro-Palestinian speech. We witnessed one university president after another subjected to hearings and investigations, in which the clear message was that support for Palestinian advocacy could no longer be tolerated. This signaled a shift in the role of higher education institutions: they were no longer viewed as spaces for intellectual inquiry and critical thought but rather as entities that must align with state-sponsored agendas. Universities became conscripted into a new kind of war—students are now being asked to serve the state bureaucracy, rather than critically engage with it. This attitude does not reflect every individual at these institutions, but rather the board of trustees and the leadership who set the agenda; and the rest of the university’s administration uncritically abides by it.
We must learn two crucial lessons from these events: first, that even those who capitulate to the pressures of Zionist repression will not be spared; and second, we must reconsider the kind of institutions we want our universities to be. Zionism demands nothing less than the excusal of Israeli terror, and institutions that continue to uphold this demand will only further alienate their own students.
For all the talk about past protests—whether against the Vietnam War or South African apartheid—the current stance of the university shows that these institutions are more likely to align with the state’s interests when the issue at hand challenges the very foundations of that power. The university may publicly celebrate its historical stances, but when it comes to Palestine, it has shown cowardice. The institution’s complicity in the ongoing injustice against Palestinians will be part of its legacy and may pave the way for the incoming president to gut academic freedom further. This selective engagement with history is a tactic to mask present-day complicity.
It raises the question: What is it about the disruption of a recruitment fair that warrants a response as extreme as suspension? To date, many students involved in similar protests have faced severe consequences for their activism. But these responses only begin to make sense when we center the Palestinian cause. The fact is that many of our institutions are complicit in the ongoing violence against Palestinians. Calls for divestment and solidarity are not just demands for financial change but a moral reclamation of humanity.
Palestine is the issue of our time, holding up a mirror to society and forcing us to consider what kind of world we want to live in. As Fanon teaches us, “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.” Can we continue to live in a world where our educational institutions abandon intellectual integrity and instead uphold complicity? Why do self-professed liberal institutions so often opt for complicity over justice? As Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinians rages on, universities across the world have shown that, rather than being sanctuaries for righteous indignation, they have become sites for its repression. As the fall semester of 2024 approached, university administrators and law enforcement agencies worked together to find new ways to suppress student activism. Campuses became hostile environments, with faculty losing their jobs and administrators coordinating their efforts to stifle dissent.
The repression on campuses isn’t just about shutting down pro-Palestinian voices. It is part of a broader crisis of legitimacy faced by these institutions. When students are confronted with moral crossroads and the universities side with the oppressors, their legitimacy falters. The university, if it continues to align with Zionism and the genocide it justifies, will continue to suffer. As we witness the forced resignations of university presidents, the denial of tenure to scholars, and the firing of faculty, it becomes clear: if we do not reflect on the current state of the university, then our positions within these institutions are meaningless.