Academia has a problem. The anti-Semitism that is running through American colleges and universities has been growing more and more obvious since October 7th. Now, Georgetown University joins the conversation.

POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney breathlessly reported on Wednesday evening that ICE had “snatched” postdoctoral researcher/instructor and student visa holder Badar Khan Suri from outside his Virginia home, and informed him that his visa had been revoked. It seems that Secretary of State Rubio meant his warning about supporting terror groups while on a visa or a green card, and Suri is facing deportation, as Homeland Security public affairs assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed.

Suri was a foreign exchange student at Georgetown University actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media.

Suri has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas. The Secretary of State issued a… https://t.co/gU02gLAlX1

— Tricia McLaughlin (@TriciaOhio) March 20, 2025

The claim, as POLITICO would like everyone to think, is that Suri is being targeted with guilt by association. Like Mahmoud Khalil, he also has a wife who is a United States citizen. (How are these visa holders finding American-born wives to marry so easily?) Apparently, Suri’s father-in-law has some solid ties to Hamas.

According to Suri’s petition for release, he was put in deportation proceedings under the same rarely used provision of immigration law that the government has invoked to try to deport Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate student and green card holder who led pro-Palestinian protests on campus. That provision gives the secretary of State the power to deport noncitizens if the secretary determines that their continued presence in the U.S. would threaten foreign policy.

Suri’s lawyer, Hassan Ahmad, argued in his petition that Suri is being punished because of the Palestinian heritage of his wife — who is a U.S. citizen — and because the government suspects that he and his wife oppose U.S. foreign policy toward Israel.

The petition says the couple has “long been doxxed and smeared” on anonymously run, far-right websites due to their support for Palestinian rights. The petition also says that Suri’s wife, Mapheze Saleh, has been alleged to have “ties with Hamas” and once worked for Al Jazeera.

A 2018 article about the couple published in the Hindustan Times, an Indian newspaper, said Saleh’s father, Ahmed Yousef, served as a “senior political adviser to the Hamas leadership.”

Why is this guy at Georgetown University to begin with?

According to his faculty page on Georgetown’s website, Suri is a postdoctoral fellow at the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, which is part of the university’s School of Foreign Service. According to his court petition and a university directory, he is teaching a class this semester on “Majoritarianism and Minority Rights in South Asia.” Suri has a Ph.D. in peace and conflict studies from a university in India.

“Dr. Khan Suri is an Indian national who was duly granted a visa to enter the United States to continue his doctoral research on peacebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan,” a Georgetown spokesperson said in a statement. “We are not aware of him engaging in any illegal activity, and we have not received a reason for his detention. We support our community members’ rights to free and open inquiry, deliberation and debate, even if the underlying ideas may be difficult, controversial or objectionable. We expect the legal system to adjudicate this case fairly.”

So, Georgetown University is importing instructors on student visas, who conveniently marry American citizens, to teach about “peace and conflict studies” and all that. Again, Suri is ON A STUDENT VISA. If the State Department finds him to be a supporter of Hamas, then they have the legal right to revoke the visa and send him home. The claim that he hasn’t broken a law does not matter. That his father-in-law is “a senior political adviser to Hamas leadership” isn’t really the issue, either (though it does make his choice in wives rather interesting). THIS is the issue at hand – his own personal support for Hamas.

The Middle East Forum think tank has uncovered that Saleh, the daughter of longtime Hamas leader Ahmed Yousef, is married to Georgetown post-doctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri. Even more troubling, Suri—who holds a position at Georgetown’s Alwaleed Center for Christian and Muslim Understanding, funded by Saudi tycoon Alwaleed bin Talal—has repeatedly endorsed Hamas terror and actively spreads its propaganda while claiming to specialize in “peace processes in the Middle East.”

Suri isn’t just connected to Hamas by family. He actively spreads the terror group’s propaganda and promotes virulent antisemitism on social media. In a blatant act of revisionism, he denied well-documented reports of the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, posting on Facebook: “Three lies by Israeli occupation, no proof whatsoever of babies beheaded, rapes or mass killings at carnival.”

In another post, he stated that Palestine’s elected government must sustain its resistance, legitimizing Hamas’s violent actions. Years ago, he expressed support for Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, posting a video saying, “This is what Hamas argues. Sheikh Yaseen giving the reasons why his group is fighting for their land which was stolen,” legitimizing Hamas’s violent actions.

Perhaps most disturbingly, Suri posted a video showing Hamas terrorists holding Israeli child hostages and wrote, “This is how Hamas men dealt with kids on Oct. 7.” Rather than condemn the horrifying abduction of Israeli children, Suri appeared to defend and even praise how Hamas militants “dealt” with the children.

This Jewish News Syndicate article was published on February 24th. According to Marina Medvin, Suri got busy cleaning up his profiles once it came out.
https://twitter.com/MarinaMedvin/status/1902439011219587560
I don’t know how many times we’re going to have to say this. When you are in the United States on a visa or a green card, you are here on our invitation. That invitation can be revoked at any time. This is not a free speech issue. ICE is not arresting Suri’s wife Mapheze Saleh, even if Daddy is Hamas and she holds similarly vile views. But we do not have to tolerate Bader Khan Suri and his support for Hamas. Rubio apparently declared Suri deportable back on March 15th under the Immigration and Nationality Act, and it’s taken ICE this long to catch up to him. Suri’s case is far easier than Mahmoud Khalil’s, since he is currently on a visa. As Brown University professor Dr. Rasha Alawieh discovered, if you express support for a terror leader or group, your visa can be revoked immediately and you can be sent on your merry way somewhere else. The United States does NOT have to accept or allow Hezbollah fangirls or Hamas supporters to come into or stay in the country.

Georgetown University is currently standing by Suri, on the claims that he didn’t break any laws.

Perhaps they would like to talk about why they would accept or tolerate a postdoctoral instructor who supports what Hamas did on October 7th. Apparently, the deep seated anti-Semitism that has permeated through academia should be addressed by asking who the hell they are bringing in on student or work visas to teach at these colleges and universities. This is the question that alumni – especially donors – should be pressing university administrations about.

Which leads to my question for Secretary of State Marco Rubio. WHO was issuing and approving these visas for people like Mahmoud Khalil, Dr. Rasha Alawieh, and Bader Khan Suri? Did State Department officials simply see the prestigious names of universities like Columbia, Brown, and Georgetown, and simply rubber stamp visas without a second thought? Who was in charge of vetting people’s backgrounds and checking their social media? Rubio himself is trying to fix the issues at hand, but I want to know who was letting these people in to begin with, and if these same people still have jobs within the State Department. It won’t matter how many visas are revoked on the grounds of supporting terror, if more of them are simply allowed in because they have the holy glow of academia’s acceptance upon them.

Featured image: Georgetown University via Warren LeMay on Wikimedia Commons, cropped, public domain under CC0 1.0 Universal