Mahmoud Khalil
PalestineAbout
Mahmoud Khalil is a Palestinian writer and activist born in a refugee camp in Syria to a family displaced from Palestine. At eighteen, he left Syria and moved to Lebanon, where he studied computer science at the Lebanese American University while working with Syrian refugees. He later served as a programme manager at the British Embassy in Beirut. In 2022, Khalil moved to the United States to study at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He became widely known as a negotiator and spokesperson during the student protests against the war in Gaza. In March 2025, he was detained by U.S. immigration authorities and held for more than three months while facing deportation proceedings, an experience that brought international attention to questions of free speech, immigration, and political dissent. No Land to Stand On: Notes from Detention (2026) is his first book. Drawing on his experiences in detention and his family’s history of displacement, Khalil writes about the human consequences of political repression and the struggle for dignity, freedom, and the right to belong.
