Earlier this year, Momodou Taal, an international student and former professor, averted an attempt by Cornell University to get him deported out of the United States.
In Septemer, after campus officers spotted Taal at a pro-Palestinian protest, Cornell University disenrolled him, thus jeopardizing his student visa. Through an appeals process, Cornell University ultimately allowed Taal to complete his studies in the doctoral Africana Studies program.
However, Taal can no longer teach on campus. That hasn’t appeared to stop the British citizen of Gambian heritage who told reporters, activists and Black Power elders during a virtual event that he will continue to engage undergraduate students.
“I’ve been invited by the Black Student Union to give more talks,” Taal said. “I plan to give political education off campus [and] hopefully it’s translated to campus. The work doesn’t stop. The Palestinian organizing doesn’t stop.”
Taal said that his battle has sparked a campus where fervor for political dissent ebbs and flows. “These institutions don’t think that students can fight back,” Taal said. “Black students are seeing that you can fight back and win.”
Greater Efforts to Combat Zionism
Last spring, college students across the United States brought their campuses to a standstill through protests and the formation of encampments in outdoor spaces. This protracted acts of civil disobedience, which incited intense law enforcement blowback, often centered on demands for divestment from Israel and companies that support its government, universities’ disclosure of endowments and investments, and protection of pro-Palestinian speech on campus.
On May 8, hours before D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) and Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela A. Smith were scheduled to testify before the U.S. House Oversight Committee about the District’s response to antisemitism, Metropolitan Police Department raided an encampment on the campuses of The George Washington University that, for two weeks, attracted hundreds of students from neighboring universities.
Hours after the raid, and a conversation with Bowser, Congressman James Comer (R-KY), chair of the House’s oversight committee, cancelled that hearing. However, D.C. students, nor students in any jurisdiction for that matter, may be out of harm’s way with Congressman Greg Murphy’s introduction of the Education, Not Agitation Act, which eliminates tax benefits for people who commit crimes while protesting on college campuses.
Other bills revoke visas of foreign student protesters, bar student protesters from federal student loans and loan forgiveness, and tie universities’ accreditation to their campus protest response.
There’s also the threat of President-elect Donald J. Trump, who’s preparing for a return to the White House. Earlier this year, while speaking with campaign donors, Trump threatened to deport foreign protesters. He has also mulled the denial of accreditation and federal support for colleges that support “anti semitic propaganda.”
Most recently, Trump chose Harmeet Dhillon, a proponent of penalizing protesters and universities for antisemitism, to lead the Department of Justice’s civil rights division. Taal calls it more of the same.
“What was allowed under President Joe Biden will lay the groundwork for President-elect Donald Trump to do more,” Taal recently told The Informer. “It becomes incumbent upon us to know the world where the mass majority of people are suffering. A lot of students are demoralized because of what has happened. There has been an energy shift because of the repression.”
For decades, the Israeli government has marginalized Palestinians living in Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories — all as an expression of their Zionist belief that they have Biblical claim to Palestinians’ land.
Methods of marginalization include expulsion, land seizures, laws against marriage between Israelis and members of occupied territories, and denial of the right to return for expelled Palestinians. In 2011, the Israeli government went further in passing legislation defunding institutions that commemorate Israeli Independence Day as a day of mourning. Taal’s case counts among several efforts that have unfolded across the United States in response to protests against the killing and displacement of Palestinians.
On the afternoon of Oct. 15, Taal spoke at a virtual event that allowed for examination of his experience in the greater historical and geopolitical context. Event organizers included his cousin Olimattta Taal and Obi Egbuna of the Zimbabwe-Cuba Friendship Association. Toward the end of the program, Egbuna, a journalist, educator and organizer, spoke about Taal in the same vein as historical figures.
“Brother Momodou sacrificed his Ph.D. to stand with the Palestinian people. That conjures up the memory of Marion Barry,” Egbuna said. “We know that Marcus Garvey was deported on mail fraud charges. Claudia Jones was deported for violating the McClellan Act. Bro. Momodou is in good company.”
Egbuna went on to explore next steps in organizing against Zionist domination on the African continent. Initiatives he mentioned include a campaign to encourage rappers to inquire about the origin of their jewelry, secure a refund if the jewelry comes from an Israeli diamond mine, and donate the proceeds to Pan-African organizing efforts.
As Egbuna explained, there’s also outreach to the African American Mayors Association, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Johnny Ford, former mayor of Tuskegee, Alabama to organize against the training of U.S. police officers by Israel Defense Forces.
“Bro. Momodou helps us pivot from sympathy and compassion to anti-Zionist action,” Egbuna said. “He’s showing an alternative to the opportunism that we’ve seen for so long. He’s igniting a tradition that’s one of the best aspects of the African personality.”
Taal Receives Support from Organizers, Young and Old
Other speakers on Oct. 15 included Akinyele Umoja of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Black Power organizing pioneer Mukasa Ricks, and Russell Shoatz III, son of late Black Panther Party founding member Russell Maroon Shoatz.
Seth Viera of Cornell University’s Black Student Union, also weighed in on Taal’s situation, drawing a contrast between the support that Jewish students received and what he called the violent response to Taal, who practices the Muslim faith.
“Momodou’s a logical first choice in a post-9/11 world,” Viera said. “Cornell reacted violently because he dared to speak. Being Black at these institutions, your existence is tolerable but speaking out is unconscionable. That was the most heinous crime that he committed, in light of the Pan-African tradition.”
Ricks said that Momodou counts among those who are chipping away at the mask that has allowed Zionism to operate freely in many sectors of global society.
“Zionists told people that they’re the chosen people of God, but they’ve shown that they’re the chosen people of colonialism and imperialism, destroying those who tell the truth,” Ricks said. “The attack on Momodou is an attack on every student in Cornell. It’s a higher attack on Africa, Palestine and the people who are fighting.”
With a Trump threat now imminent, Shoatz called for all hands on deck to protect students who continue to organize on college campuses across the United States.
“We need to be vigilant and recognize that globally there are solidarity ties we need to make,” Shoatz said. When we take that land, when we take up space on campus, we have to be prepared to keep the space at whatever cost. Even if community members need to come in and support the students and help them keep the space [so] their community is not invaded by the state.”
