Columbia

Feb. 25 (UPI) — Nobel Prize-winner and scientist Richard Axel announced he is resigning as co-director of Columbia University’s premier interdisciplinary brain research center following recent revelations of his relationship with disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Axel announced in a statement that he was stepping down as co-director of the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute “to focus on research and teaching in my lab.”

Several high-profile individuals have been fired, resigned and even arrested since late January when the Department of Justice released more than 3 million additional pages of information about its investigation into Epstein, who died by suicide in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting his sex trafficking trial.

The files — and names they contain — have drawn intense public attention, as demands for accountability grow for wealthy and well-connected associates of Epstein whose ties to him have come under renewed scrutiny.

Axel’s relationship with Epstein was revealed in the recently released documents, showing the two corresponded since at least 2010.

“My past association with Jeffrey Epstein was a serious error in judgment, which I deeply regret,” Axel, 79, said.

“I apologize for compromising the trust of friends, students and colleagues. I recognize the problems that this has caused, and I will work to restore this trust. What has emerged about Epstein’s appalling conduct, the harm that he has caused to so many people, makes my association with him all the more painful and inexcusable.”

Axel told New York Magazine in 2007 that he first met Epstein in the 1980s. The documents recently released showed that the two frequently connected over the years since at least 2010.

Columbia said in a separate statement that it has seen no evidence that Axel violated any university policy or the law.

“However, Dr. Axel made clear that in light of this past association, and the continued fallout from the release of DOJ files, he felt it appropriate to relinquish his position as co-director,” the university said.

“The university agrees with this decision, while at the same time recognizing his extraordinary contributions to the university and his dedication to his colleagues, to his students and to science.”

The school said Axel was also resigning from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Axel won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Linda Buck in 2004 for discoveries related to how the sense of smell works, specifically their identification of odorant receptor genes and how those receptors detect and process smell, according to the Nobel Prize.

Fallout from the Justice Department’s recent release of Epstein files has impacted the lives of several high-profile individuals, including former British Ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson, who was arrested this week on suspicion of misconduct in public office over accusations of leaking government information in emails to Epstein.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Britain’s Prince Andrew, was also recently arrested on similar charges over allegations that he passed confidential information to Epstein.

Mahdawi, a Palestinian student activist, faced deportation proceedings amid a protest crackdown under the Trump administration.

An immigration judge in the United States has ruled against an attempt under President Donald Trump to deport Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University student arrested last year for his protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The decision, issued on February 13, became public as part of court filings on Tuesday from Mahdawi’s lawyers.

The filing was submitted to a federal appeals court in New York, which has been considering a challenge from the Trump administration against Mahdawi’s release from custody.

In a public statement released through the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Mahdawi thanked the immigration court for its decision, which he framed as a strike in favour of free-speech rights.

“I am grateful to the court for honoring the rule of law and holding the line against the government’s attempts to trample on due process,” Mahdawi said. “This decision is an important step towards upholding what fear tried to destroy: the right to speak for peace and justice.”

But the ACLU indicated that the immigration court’s decision was made “without prejudice”, a legal term that means the Trump administration could refile its case against Mahdawi.

Raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, Mahdawi is a lawful permanent resident who has lived in Vermont for 10 years.

He enrolled at Columbia, a prestigious Ivy League university, to study philosophy. But he was also a visible member of the campus’s activist community, founding a Palestinian student society alongside fellow student Mahmoud Khalil.

Columbia became a hub for pro-Palestinian protests in 2024, and Trump campaigned for re-election, in part, on cracking down on the demonstrations.

Khalil became the first student protester to be detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in March of last year, less than three months into Trump’s second term.

Then, on April 14, Mahdawi was arrested at a meeting set up by the government, allegedly to process his citizenship application.

ICE detained him in “direct retaliation for his advocacy of Palestinian rights”, the ACLU said in a statement at the time.

The Trump administration attempted to transfer Mahdawi out of state to Louisiana, but a court order ultimately blocked it from doing so.

Mahdawi was ultimately released on April 30, after US Judge Geoffrey Crawford accused the Trump administration of doing “great harm” to someone who had committed no crime.

Human rights advocates have described the Trump administration’s attempts to deport foreign-born student activists as a campaign to chill free speech.

After his release last year, Mahdawi walked out of the court with both hands in the air, flashing peace signs as supporters greeted him with cheers.

As he spoke, he shared a message for Trump. “I am not afraid of you,” Mahdawi said to Trump.

He also addressed the people of Palestine and sought to dispel perceptions that the student protest movement was anything but peaceful.

“We are pro-peace and antiwar,” Mahdawi explained. “To my people in Palestine: I feel your pain, I see your suffering, and I see freedom, and it is very soon.”

Mahdawi’s arrest comes as part of a wider push by the Trump administration to target visa holders and permanent residents for their pro-Palestine advocacy.

Trump has also pressured top universities to crack down on pro-Palestine protests in the name of combating anti-Semitism. In some cases, the Trump administration has opened investigations into campuses where pro-Palestinian protests were prominent, accusing them of civil rights violations.

Last July, Columbia University entered into a $200m settlement with the Trump administration, with a further $21m given to end a probe into allegations of religious-based harassment.

The university, however, did not admit to wrongdoing.

Leqaa Kordia, a 33-year-old Palestinian woman detained in the United States by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency since March, has been rushed to a hospital after a medical episode, according to media reports.

Kordia is being held in Texas after being detained as part of US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestine protests on college campuses across the country.

Her legal team said she was targeted for her protest against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza near Columbia University in New York in 2024, but the federal government said she was arrested for allegedly overstaying her student visa.

Since her hospitalisation on Friday, Kordia’s legal team and family said they have not been able to speak with her and do not know her whereabouts.

Here is everything we know about Kordia and why she continues to remain in detention:

Who is Kordia?

Kordia grew up in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah before coming to the US in 2016. She arrived on a visitor’s visa, staying with her mother, a US citizen, in Paterson, New Jersey, home to one of the largest Arab communities in the country.

She later transitioned from a tourist visa to a student visa, according to her habeas corpus petition.

After her mother applied for Kordia to remain in the US as the relative of a citizen, her green card application was approved in 2021. However, she received incorrect advice from a teacher that led to her student visa expiring in 2022, according to her lawyers.

Before her arrest, Kordia worked as a server at a Middle Eastern restaurant on Palestine Way in New Jersey and helped to care for her autistic half-brother.

Kordia was moved to protest against Israel’s war due to personal loss. Since the start of the war in October 2023, Kordia said, more than 200 of her relatives have been killed.

Israel has killed more than 71,000 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded more than 170,000 in a war that human rights groups, a United Nations commission and a growing number of scholars said amounts to genocide. Since a “ceasefire” began in October, Israel has killed more than 500 Palestinians and continues to impose curbs on the entry of aid into Gaza.

If deported, Kordia would be handed over to the Israeli government.

Why was Kordia arrested?

She was first arrested in April 2024 during a protest outside the gates of Columbia University, but the case was soon dropped.

On March 13, 2025, Kordia showed up at the ICE headquarters in Newark, New Jersey, for what she believed to be routine immigration questions. She was detained there, “thrown into an unmarked van and sent 1,500 miles [more than 2,400km] away”, Kordia wrote in the USA Today newspaper last month.

Kordia was neither a student at Columbia University nor a part of political circles.

“Though I was not a student, I felt compelled to participate. After all, Israel, with the backing of the United States, has laid waste to Gaza, forcibly displacing my family, killing nearly 200 of my relatives,” she wrote in USA Today.

Today, Kordia is the only person who remains in detention from the Columbia campus demonstrations. She has been held at Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas.

A leader of the protests, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student with Algerian citizenship and a US green card, and others have been released. Khalil, however, is still in a legal battle to remain in the US with his American wife and child. Last month, an appeals court panel dismissed a lawsuit Khalil filed challenging his detention and deportation order. The judges concluded that the federal court that ordered Khalil’s release last year lacked jurisdiction over the matter.

What are the charges against Kordia?

The US government has called Kordia’s money transfers to relatives in the Middle East evidence of possible ties to “terrorists”.

Kordia’s lawyers have continuously argued for her release, saying she was targeted by federal officials for her participation in pro-Palestinian protests.

The federal government has maintained that the case against Kordia is of overstaying a student visa.

“Her arrest had nothing to do with her radical activities,” the Department of Homeland Security said in April. “Kordia was arrested for immigration violations due to having overstayed her F-1 student visa, which had been terminated on January 26, 2022, for lack of attendance.”

Writing in USA Today last month, Kordia said she does not consider herself either a leader or an activist.

“I am a devout Muslim who is deeply committed to my faith and community. I’m a Palestinian woman who enjoys playing the oud, making pottery and hiking,” Kordia wrote. “Speaking out against what rights groups and experts have called a genocide is my moral duty and – I thought – a constitutionally protected right for all in this country. Except, it seems, when that speech defends Palestinian life.”

An immigration judge has called for Kordia’s release twice. However, it has been repeatedly blocked through a series of procedural and administrative moves.

“[The] Trump administration has exploited rarely used procedural loopholes to keep me confined, a practice now being challenged in federal district courts across the country, with many finding the practice unconstitutional,” Kordia wrote.

How has Kordia lived in ICE detention?

Since Kordia was moved to the ICE detention facility in Alvarado in March, she has been facing a range of issues, from sleeping on a bare mattress on the floor to being denied religious accommodations, including halal meals.

“Inside the ICE facility where I’m being held, conditions are filthy, overcrowded and inhumane,” Kordia wrote in her piece for USA Today. “For months, I slept in a plastic shell, known as a ‘boat,’ surrounded by cockroaches and only a thin blanket. Privacy does not exist here.”

Last year, when Kordia’s cousin Hamzah Abushaban visited her a week after her arrest, he told The Associated Press news agency in an interview that he was taken aback by the dark circles under her eyes and her state of confusion.

“One of the first things she asked me was why she was there,” Abushaban said. “She cried a lot. She looked like death.”

Rights groups and some Democratic Party leaders have called her a “political prisoner”, condemning the way her case has proceeded.

State Representative Salman Bhojani said the conditions at the detention facility were “suffocating”.

Kordia’s dorm, he said, had 60 mattresses crammed into a space designed for 20 women.

“She does not even have clothing that fully covers her body. Community organizations have tried to provide more appropriate clothing and have been turned away,” Bhojani said. “Male staff enter the dorm at any time, leaving her body exposed in violation of her religious obligations.”

Calling for her release, Amnesty International noted that ICE has “repeatedly violated” Kordia’s religious rights. “She has been served almost no halal meals, forcing her to eat food that doesn’t meet her dietary requirements and causing significant weight loss,” the human rights group said in a statement.

“During Ramadan, staff refused to let her save food for when she could break her fast, forcing her either to go hungry or to break her fast early,” Amnesty said. “She has not been provided with clothing suitable for prayer or a clean prayer space.”

Why was Kordia hospitalised?

On Friday, Abushaban said he heard about Kordia’s hospitalisation in the morning from a person formerly detained with his cousin.

Kordia had fallen, hit her head and suffered a seizure in a bathroom at the Prairieland Detention Center, he told The Dallas Morning News newspaper.

In a statement on Saturday, Kordia’s attorneys and family members demanded answers from the Department of Homeland Security and Prairieland Detention Center regarding her health and whereabouts.

“[Kordia] was reportedly hospitalised yesterday morning after fainting and having a seizure at the Prairieland Detention Center,” the statement said, adding: “Neither her legal team nor family have been provided answers about where she has been hospitalised, the specifics of her health status, and whether and how ICE will ensure her health upon discharge from the undisclosed, off-site hospital.”

“We have since learned that she is expected to spend another night there, but we still have not been able to speak with her directly or have any confirmation of what brought her to the hospital in the first place,” the statement said.

The family members told US media that they called all hospitals in the vicinity but could not locate Kordia.

What were the Columbia protests about?

In 2024, pro-Palestinian student encampments at Columbia University helped ignite a global movement against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

The protest sites, however, were broken up after Columbia University allowed hundreds of New York City police officers on campus, leading to dozens of arrests.

The student protesters demanded an end to Israel’s war in Gaza and the university’s divestment from companies linked to the Israeli military.

Columbia University imposed severe punishments, including expulsion and revocation of academic degrees, on dozens of students who participated in the protests. University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, who was criticised for the handling of the student protests, stepped down.

The protests also put Columbia at odds with the Trump administration, whose officials alleged anti-Semitism on campus. Campaigners said the campus crackdown violated US free speech rights.

Trump also cancelled millions of dollars in federal funding for the university, accusing it of failing to protect Jewish students. Later, Columbia settled and agreed to pay $200m to the government over three years. In exchange, the Trump administration agreed to return parts of the $400m in grants it froze or terminated.