A Palestinian student arrested as he was about to finalize his U.S. citizenship accused Columbia University on Thursday of eroding democracy with its handling of campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war. Mohsen Mahdawi, 34, who led anti-war protests at the Ivy League school in New York in 2023 and 2024, spent 16 days in a Vermont prison before a judge ordered him released on April 30. Mahdawi said instead of being a “beacon of hope," the university is inciting violence against students.