Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil was detained by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement on March 8 (Photo by Ajay Suresh | CC BY 2.0).
Dozens of Jewish Penn professors, faculty members, and graduate students signed an open letter calling on university leaders across the country to resist recent federal actions targeting pro-Palestinian organizing on college campuses.
The March 11 letter, titled ‘Not in Our Name,’ has been signed by nearly 3000 signatories — including 34 from Penn — at the time of publication. The signatories denounced “anyone who invokes our name – and cynical claims of antisemitism — to harass, expel, arrest, or deport members of our campus communities,” and called on university administrators to “cease any voluntary collaboration with federal immigration enforcement."
Among the letter's demands was a call on university leaders to “reject the dangerous narrative that pro-Palestinian advocacy, in which many Jews have participated, is presumptively anti-Jewish.”
Earlier this month, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained 2024 Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist and lead negotiator for Columbia’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment. His detention prompted nationwide protests, including multiple in Philadelphia over the past week.
The letter listed Khalil by name, and described the action taken against him by the Trump administration as “a disturbing escalation in the Trump administration’s open assault on our democracy.”
“People with green cards or other visa statuses entitle them to certain forms of due process in the American system,” Alan Charles Kors Endowed Term Professor of History and letter signatory Benjamin Nathans said in an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian. “There have to be formal charges, and those have to be scrutinized either by a board or a court. That's the principle that I think, I hope, everybody can agree on.”
Claims of antisemitism, the letter argued, have been used by the Trump administration to “exert ‘existential terror’ on our institutions and our communities.”
“I'm a survivor of an antisemitic, totalitarian regime, and I absolutely reject the aberration of fact that Zionists have been peddling that equate standing up for human rights and against genocide with being anti-Jewish,” Penn professor and letter signatory Anna Badkhen told the DP.
“The propaganda has been so effective, people are so easily convinced that they're being antisemitic by criticizing Israel,” Badkhen added. “The hope behind this letter, signed by Jewish faculty all over the country, is that we as Jews remind people that this is wrong. Ask me, I'm a Jew. Ask me about antisemitism.”
Badkhen’s sentiment was echoed by Nathans who said that Penn's encampment felt “nonviolent” and not “threatening” to him as a Jewish professor. He added, "Whatever I thought of it politically, it did not cross the line into violence and harassment.”
The letter criticized the Anti-Defamation League — which publishes annual reports about “the current state of antisemitism on campus and how universities and colleges are responding” — alleging that the group is “smear[ing] our students and now applaud[ing] the lawless targeting of political opponents.” Earlier this year, the ADL gave Penn a ‘C’ rating on its 2025 Campus Report Card.
“The hope is that people who are not entirely brainwashed by the ADL and other organizations that perpetuate Zionist ideals and colonialist propaganda can take a pause when they see Jewish faculty explain that protesting genocide is not an antisemitic action,” Badkhen said.
The letter noted that while its signatories may hold a variety of “views about Israel and Palestine, politics in the Middle East, and student activism on our campuses,” they collectively “reject rhetoric that caricatures our students and colleagues as ‘antisemitic terrorists’ because they advocate for Palestinian human rights and freedom.”
Penn Hebraica Library Specialist Dainy Bernstein told the DP that the “complexity and nuance” represented in the document served as motivation to sign the letter.
“The letter acknowledges that the signatories do not necessarily share the same political beliefs, do not necessarily have the same understanding of the conflict, and yet there comes a point where we draw a line, and everyone can stand in agreement on this,” Bernstein said.
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