The Khalil arrest shows why we must protect ‘freedom for the thought that we hate’

What is the First Amendment for? Quite simply, it is for protecting our right to express views that are unpopular or even offensive. There’s more to it than that, of course, and it’s not unlimited. But it surely is there to act as a shield for Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist who Donald Trump’s jackbooted thugs have arrested and who the administration is now trying to deport to — well, somewhere.

Khalil was involved pro-Palestinian activism at Columbia University last spring. As Philip Marcelo of The Associated Press reports, “The White House … claimed Khalil organized protests where pro-Hamas propaganda was distributed.” But Khalil also holds a green card, making him a permanent resident of the United States. Moreover, the First Amendment extends to anyone in the U.S., citizen or non-citizen, legal resident or undocumented immigrant.

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Nearly a century ago, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. had a few things to say about another non-U.S. citizen with unpopular views. Rosika Schwimmer was a Hungarian immigrant, feminist and pacifist who sought to become a U.S. citizen. She was turned down because she refused to take the oath of citizenship, believing that it obliged her to take up arms if ordered to do so — notwithstanding the reality that, as a woman, she would have been exempt from military service.

Her case ended up before the Supreme Court, which, in 1929, on a 6-3 vote, overturned an appeals court ruling in her favor. Justice Holmes wrote an eloquent dissent that is still invoked as a defense of the First Amendment’s true meaning. He said in part:

Some of her answers might excite popular prejudice, but, if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate. I think that we should adhere to that principle with regard to admission into, as well as to life within, this country.

“Freedom for the thought that we hate” is a concise and compelling explanation of why the First Amendment matters, and it’s a phrase that we’ve all heard over and over again. Anthony Lewis even made it the title of one of his books.

And it’s why Trump is acting illegally and unconstitutionally in holding Mahmoud Khalil for deportation. Khalil has not been charged with a crime. He has not been accused of providing material assistance to Hamas. Rather, he is being singled out for his political views. And let’s be honest — Trump is doing this in a deliberate attempt to rekindle left-wing activism on behalf of the Palestinians in order to harm Democrats, universities and anyone else who stands in the way of his authoritarian project.

New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg has called Khalil’s arrest the most significant threat to free speech since the Red Scare of the 1940s and ’50s. “If someone legally in the United States can be grabbed from his home for engaging in constitutionally protected political activity, we are in a drastically different country from the one we inhabited before Trump’s inauguration,” she wrote. And indeed, Trump has boasted that more arrests will follow.

Schwimmer, at least, was allowed to remain in the U.S. as a non-citizen. She eventually moved to New York City and died in 1948. Khalil’s fate has yet to be determined.