Hundreds of thousands of students and others have signed petitions claiming that Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest violates his rights of free speech.

The Trump administration has arrested and decided to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder, married to an American citizen who is eight months pregnant. His arrest raises important questions relating to the status of permanent residents who have green cards.

The law explicitly authorizes their deportation on a number of specified grounds, including conviction for crimes of moral turpitude, as well as for somewhat vaguer “national security” grounds. 

Hundreds of thousands of students and others have signed petitions claiming that Mr. Khalil’s arrest violates his rights of free speech. The evidence, though, seems to suggest that he went beyond merely expressing anti-Israel views.

He almost certainly trespassed and may have participated in actions that blocked access by Jewish students to classes. Yet he has not been convicted of any crimes of moral turpitude. 

As a matter of pure constitutional law, the president would have the right to deport anyone whose presence in America was not in the national interest, but statutes would seem to limit that broad authority. 

Ultimately, the courts will have to decide whether the scope of presidential power has been constrained by the enactment of congressional legislation.

Meantime, Mr. Khalil has been whisked off to Louisiana, where he is being detained pending the resolution of the deportation demand. 

The reason he was moved a thousand miles away from his home probably has more to do with judge shopping than with safety concerns. He is less likely to find a sympathetic judge in Louisiana than he might be in New York or the District of Columbia. 

Regardless of where the case is initially brought, it may ultimately end up in the Supreme Court, testing the issue of executive authority. Much will depend on the evidence produced by the government in support of deportation. 

Unless the government can prove by a standard lower than proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that he meets the criteria for deportation, it may well lose. The decision whether to try him for crimes of moral turpitude also depends on the evidence. 

It depends, too, on the decisions by New York and federal prosecutors whether to bring the criminal case. Such a case could only be brought in New York where his alleged crimes may have occurred. 

So this is not a slam dunk for the government. Nor should it be. A delicate balance must be struck between the free speech rights of even the most obnoxious, anti-American, antisemitic and anti-free speech zealots and the rights of those who he may have victimized by his repressive actions. 

The vast majority of Americans would almost certainly want to see Mr. Khalil deported, but when it comes to free speech, the majority does not rule — the First Amendment does. 

So, depending on the evidence, this may prove to be an important First Amendment case challenging the power of the executive in the context of deportation. 

In resolving this conflict, the courts should consider two related First Amendment rights: The right of the non-American citizen to express controversial views and the right of American citizens to hear such views. 

It is certainly possible that the need to resolve these conflicting rights may be mooted by the evidence. If the government is able to prove that his actions went beyond First Amendment protected speech, the courts may well resolve the issue in favor of the government. 

The presumption of innocence operates in criminal cases as a matter of law. It may also have applicability in civil cases as a matter of policy.

In the end, no one should have sympathy for Mr. Khalil as an individual, as an advocate, or as an ideologue. His views, as he himself has expressed them, are despicable, anti-American, antisemitic, and intolerant of others.

Yet the First Amendment knows no such things as a false or despicable idea. All ideas are created equal as a matter of constitutional law, though they are far from equal as a matter of morality.

President Donald Trump has pledged to cut federal funding to schools that do not protect Jewish students from anti-semitic harassment and violence. The best place to begin this process is Barnard College in New York City. Cutting funding to major research universities threatens cutbacks on grants for medical and other important scientific research. Barnard College, on the other hand, is not a university. It does not have a medical school. Its faculty does little or no research that would affect Americans on a day-to-day basis. Cutting off federal aid to Barnard would have few negative impacts on issues that legitimately concern Americans, especially if it focuses on discriminatory actions and does not interfere with protected free speech

Barnard has become the poster child for anti-American, anti-semitic and anti-decent activities. Its radical "studies" departments are propaganda mills that teach students what to think rather than how to think. Consider, for example, the "Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies Department". Its website calls for students to "smash the white supremacist hetero-patriarchy." Its mission is described as follows:

"WGSS is dedicated to linking inquiry and action, theory and practice, scholarship and feminism. We work with our colleagues in Africana Studies, American Studies, and the Barnard Center for Research on Women to develop analyses and practices that address the current moment, including scholarly discussions, student projects with local communities, videos on transformative justice...."

In other words, this women's studies department has little to do with scholarship, teaching or learning. It has everything to do with advocacy. That is true of many other specialized studies departments at Barnard.

It is not surprising therefore that Barnard has become the incubator for anti-American, anti-Israel and anti-semitic protests. Signs at these protests call for "war" and "intifada". Nor is the war limited to Israel. It is directed against Americans as well. The protests involve masked students, faculty and non-students who occupy buildings, prevent Jewish students from attending classes and threaten to close down the college unless it divests from Israel and takes other bigoted actions.

When two Barnard students were expelled for disturbing a class at Columbia University taught by an Israeli professor, protesters occupied Barnard's Milstein Hall — named after a Jewish donor — and demanded that these expulsions be rescinded. The college administration, instead of disciplining students who break the rules and the law, negotiated with them. Cutting off funding from Barnard will not hurt students who want a real education, because Barnard students can enroll in courses at Columbia, which is affiliated with Barnard. It will put an end to the propaganda "courses", and "studies" "programs" in which Barnard seems to specialize.

It may also eventually cause the closing down of Barnard, because colleges depend on federal funding to supplement tuition and contributions from alumni. Donations from alumni are down recently, for understandable reasons.

Barnard's closure would be no great loss. Qualified students could transfer to Columbia or other universities, with no real negative implications. If federal funding is what is keeping Barnard afloat, it deserves to sink.

Higher education needs a shot across the bow and there is no better target than Barnard. Others may follow if they persist in destroying objective education and substituting ideological propaganda. Taxpayers should not be funding such bigoted enterprises.

It is imperative that freedom of speech, protected by the First Amendment, not be compromised by the government. Barnard is a private institution not bound by that amendment. Moreover, those activities that would cause a shutdown of federal funding are not covered by freedom of speech. They consist largely of physical actions, such as trespassing, blocking access, harassment and other forms of intimidation. Pure protests consisting of speech should not be a basis for defunding.

Federal funding is not a right. Every institution that seeks taxpayer funding must earn that privilege by what it is contributing to our nation. Barnard no longer deserves our financial or other support. Neither do other colleges and universities that do not protect Jewish students and faculty from harassment and intimidation on campus.

Most university administrators have failed to provide such protection because they are fearful of the reaction from radical students and faculty in their midst. There must be external pressures to incentivize cowardly administrators to do the right thing. Cutting off federal funding from the worst offenders, such as Barnard, would be a good beginning.

My legal analysis of today's Supreme Court decision. Watch the Dershow on Youtube, Rumble, Spotify and Apple.