Students marched from Washington Square to protest the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil​, a pro-Palestinian activist at Columbia University.

Khalil’s arrest was to combat antisemitism, the Trump administration said, but students in Charlotte said it was free speech suppression.

When protests over the Israel-Hamas war took root on Columbia University’s campus last spring, Mahmoud Khalil became a familiar, outspoken figure in a student movement that soon spread to other U.S. colleges.