Ahmed Shihab El-Din learned how to interrogate power at Columbia University. He learned how to ask hard questions, follow evidence, and hold institutions accountable. Columbia taught him that the press was the "fourth estate" — a watchdog for democracy, not a rubber stamp for power.
Then he watched Columbia become exactly what it had taught him to oppose.
"To watch the same institution perform power, cower to power," he said on the SuperHumanizer podcast. "It's been heartbreaking. It's been deeply personal."
His experience is not just one man's disillusionment. It is a window into one of the most significant free speech crises in American university history.
What happened on US campuses after October 7, 2023 was unprecedented in modern American history. According to data from Harvard's Crowd Counting Consortium, there were more than 3,700 protest days at over 500 US schools in the months that followed, including encampments at more than 130 universities. [1]
The response from university administrations was swift and severe. Across those thousands of protest days, 3,645 students were arrested — nearly one arrest for every single day of protest activity. [2] Columbia University's initial crackdown in April 2024, where 108 protesters were arrested, sparked a national wave of similar actions. By July 2025, Columbia had suspended and expelled nearly 80 students over Gaza-related protests. [3]
This happened despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of these protests were peaceful. The Guardian's analysis found that 97% of protests did not cause serious damage. [4] ACLED data showed that 94% of student demonstrations between October 7, 2023 and May 3, 2024 were nonviolent. [5]
Students were being arrested and expelled not for violence — but for speaking.
There is a specific kind of psychological harm that comes not just from being punished, but from being punished by the institution that was supposed to protect you. Psychologists call it "institutional betrayal."
Katie Bogen, co-host of SuperHumanizer and a mental health professional, named it directly during the episode: "These institutions are supposed to teach critical thought, examining primary source material, learning history, applying these pattern narratives to what they understand of the world. And the students are doing that. They're doing exactly what they've been instructed to do, and the institution is punishing them."
Ahmed agreed. The students who occupied Columbia's Butler Hall, who slept in tents on the lawn, who organized encampments across the country — they were practicing what their universities had preached. They were asking hard questions. They were following the evidence. They were doing journalism, philosophy, history, and ethics in real time.
And they were being expelled for it.
Three Columbia graduate students subsequently identified over 30 violations of university policy in the crackdown, and filed a lawsuit against the university. [6] The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) documented that 246 students or student groups across American campuses faced attempted sanctions for expression between 2020 and 2024. [7]
For Ahmed, Columbia's betrayal was especially painful because of what the university had meant to him. It was where he "cemented" his identity as a storyteller and journalist. It was where he learned that storytelling could be "a skill, a profession, but also maybe just an identity." It was where he first understood that his gift for explaining complex things could change how people see the world.
"Witnessing the way Columbia played a role at the beginning of the student movement and then what that led to and how Columbia sort of cowered," he said, "it's been heartbreaking."
He watched students like Mohsen Mahdawi and Mahmoud Khalil — Palestinian students doing exactly what Columbia had trained them to do — become targets of the very institution that had educated them. Mahdawi was arrested at his own citizenship interview. Khalil was detained by immigration authorities. Both cases became flashpoints in a national debate about whether the US government was using immigration enforcement to silence political dissent.
Ahmed saw something else in the student movement that gave him hope even amid the crackdowns: Jewish students standing in solidarity. "What really touched me was seeing how they consistently, across the US but really the world, are the ones who stood in solidarity when things got really chaotic," he said. "I saw more clarity and compassion at all the encampments than I've seen in any of the newsrooms or boardrooms I've been part of."
Ahmed's frustration is not just personal. It is a diagnosis of a deeper institutional failure.
"Columbia could and should be mustering the courage to lead by example," he said. "They could have really affirmed what journalism in this moment is supposed to be — the fourth estate rather than a rubber stamp for power. And they did the opposite."
When universities — the institutions most responsible for producing the next generation of critical thinkers, journalists, and civic leaders — choose to suppress dissent rather than protect it, the damage extends far beyond any individual student. It sends a message about what kinds of speech are acceptable, whose lives are worth protesting for, and what the limits of academic freedom actually are.
Ahmed's hope, despite everything, rests with the students themselves. "Students who sleep in tents for justice make me hopeful," he said. "I saw more clarity and compassion at all the encampments than I've seen in any of the newsrooms or boardrooms I've been part of."
The institutions may have failed them. But the students have not failed themselves.
Listen to the full episode of SuperHumanizer featuring Ahmed Shihab El-Din wherever you get your podcasts.
[1] Harvard Ash Center / Crowd Counting Consortium — An Empirical Overview of Recent Pro-Palestine Protests at U.S. Schools
[2] New York Times — Where College Protesters Have Been Arrested or Detained
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/us/pro-palestinian-college-protests-encampments.html
[3] Al Jazeera — Columbia University suspends, expels nearly 80 students over Gaza protests
[4] The Guardian — Nearly all Gaza campus protests in the US have been peaceful
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/10/peaceful-pro-palestinian-campus-protests
[5] ACLED — US Student Pro-Palestine Demonstrations Remain Overwhelmingly Peaceful
[6] The Nation — Columbia Students Sue the University for Its "Heinous" Crackdown on Palestine Protests
https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/columbia-university-students-lawsuit-palestine-protests/
[7] FIRE — 2024 Student Encampment Protests
https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/2024-student-encampment-protests
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