A University of Cincinnati student is calling on school leaders and local law enforcement to take action after an Islamophobic letter with threatening language was sent to her home address.
“There’s no action being taken,” said Laila Shaikh, founder and president of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UC. “They just are like, you know, it’s not hateful enough for them to consider it any sort of tangible threat.”
This is actually the second letter she’s received from this anonymous author since October. The first, sent to her place of work, included a short message: “Go back to Gaza you fuckin Muslim whore. No one wants you here.”
But the letter sent to Shaikh on April 3 is a long, winding screed against pro-Palestine activists spanning several pages.
“Former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil could very well be singing his own rendition of ‘Evita’ in a Louisiana detention facility as he awaits his long-overdue deportation to whatever terrorist-loving Islamist state will have him,” the letter reads, in part. “Secretary of State Marco Rubio promises that many more students who joined antisemitic mobs and participated in campus takeovers will be deported, as well.”
One hand-written page suggests activists like Shaikh should be deported and bombed; Shaikh was born in the U.S.
“A Louisiana federal jail is too nice of a place for that little bitch, Mahmoud Khalil,” the letter reads, in part. “Deport to Syria (heard it’s lovely this time of the year) better yet air drop him and all the other terroist [sic] rag wearers to Gaza right before a fresh IDF bombing.”
Shaikh told CityBeat she has no idea how the sender found her home address, which is about 40 minutes away from campus.
“I actually recently moved to this house,” she said. “It’s not even on my license. It’s not in the BMV records. It’s not on White Pages. It’s co-owned by my uncle and my dad, so it’s not even fully my last name on both of the names for this house. So the fact that someone found it is actually much more concerning than if it was just publicly out there.”
Shaikh lives at home with her family, including three young siblings. She’s concerned about their safety after receiving the letter.
“My 10-year-old sister is the one who grabbed this letter, and my mom’s the one who opened it,” she said. “The fact that someone found [my address] and is wanting to not only intimidate me, but my family, just makes this whole situation a lot crazier.”
Shaikh received the letter during UC’s Israeli Apartheid Week. The nationwide event featured demonstrations designed to highlight the Palestinian death toll as the Israeli government continues its all-out assault on Gaza. The unknown author of the letter repeatedly mentions Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate student who was arrested by ICE agents in March for expressing pro-Palestinan views as a protest organizer at Columbia University. Khalil was flown by the government to an immigration detention center in Louisiana where he faces possible deportation, despite being a legal permanent resident and married to a U.S. citizen.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently submitted a two-page memo to an immigration court asking for evidence in support of Khalil’s deportation. Instead, Rubio confirmed in the memo that the administration is seeking to expel him for his beliefs, not a crime. Rubio said Khalil’s activities were “otherwise lawful,” but that letting him remain in the country would undermine “U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States.”
The immigration judge agreed, ruling on Friday that Khalil could be deported. Khalil’s legal team has until April 23 to submit new motions.
Shaikh said pro-Palestinian activists at UC and other college campuses across the country are committed to peace, but their efforts have made students vulnerable to attacks that aren’t being addressed fairly.
“I really want to take this as a moment to highlight, first and foremost, the double standards of safety of students when it comes to Palestinian students or students of color, especially by the University of Cincinnati, and just what we’re seeing across the nation,” she said. “A lot of the suppression that Students for Justice in Palestine faces and local activists face is because of the alleged threat to Jewish safety. But when our safety is directly and very openly being threatened, it’s almost as if there’s this rhetoric that we should have expected these consequences.”
Seeking action
After receiving the letter, Shaikh said she went to the UC police department (UCPD) to file a report. She said UCPD told her to contact her local police department, the Warren County Sheriff’s Office.
“I did contact them, and again, both of them sort of said it’s not hateful enough,” she said. “I believe UCPD told me to just get bear spray and be hyper vigilant of my surroundings and that there’s not much else they could do and that if things escalate, then I should make a box of all the hateful things that I’ve gotten and save it as evidence.”
The deputy from Warren County agreed.
“I showed them everything, and they were like, ‘You should blur your house on Google Maps,’ and I was like, ‘This person already knows my address. I don’t think blurring my house on Google Maps is gonna do much,’” she said. “They were like, ‘It’s not like the letter says that they’re going to kill you directly.’”
UCPD submitted a statement to CityBeat regarding Shaikh’s case:
“A student did make us aware that they have received troubling letters at their private residence and another location, both outside of UCPD’s jurisdiction. We met with the student and connected them with their local police agency who has the authority to investigate those letters. We also connected the student with various support services the university has to offer from Student Affairs, UCPD’s Victim Services Coordinator and the Office of Equal Opportunity.
The UCPD’s priority is the safety of our campus community and, as such, when students report a concerning issue we do all that we are able to support them. We support and protect all free speech on campus, as well as protect the safety of all of our students,” wrote Kelly Cantwell, Senior Public Information Officer for UC’s Department of Public Safety.
The Warren County Sheriff’s Office declined CityBeat’s request for comment on Shaikh’s case, but legal experts say the First Amendment has a very high bar for what constitutes true threats or incitement to violence. Still, Shaikh feels the letter warrants more concern from the university.
“These same sort of, like, authority figures of the police departments and of UCPD who have more than once profiled SJP members, attacked them, arrested a student two days before this [letter] happened, are like, ‘Well, there’s really nothing we can do,’ but they’ve obviously taken action against us but never action of doing their jobs properly when when we are in need of them,” she said.
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CityBeat asked Shaikh what she would say to the anonymous letter author if given the chance.
“I’d ask them to just open their eyes and hearts up a little bit more and just see that the only thing we’re advocating for is for men, women and children to stop being slaughtered by the Israeli government and for there not to be a genocide,” she said. “When we treat people like myself or Mahmoud Khalil with these threats and with these insinuations, all it does is just fuel the fire. All it does is just make more students want to get involved. It just makes us want to do more radical actions. It just gives us more of a reason to keep pushing. So if their goal was to scare, intimidate and fear monger, it’s doing the opposite.”
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This article appears in Apr 9-15, 2025.