Momodou Taal, the British-Gambian Ph.D. student who faces possible deportation for his pro-Palestinian activism at Cornell, said he never envisioned becoming embroiled in an American protest movement when he arrived on campus in 2022.

He had been mostly content to study, teach and work on his dissertation, a look at sovereignty and political economy in Guinea.

Even so, politics ran in his family — he is the great-grandson of Gambia’s first president, Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara — and he has…