Shai Davidai speaking at rally in support of Israel, held gather in Washington Square Park, New York, NY, on September 8, 2024. Photo: Lily Ride via Reuters Connect
Columbia University is being called on to respond to accusations that it has enabled the proliferation of antisemitic and pro-terror ideologies on campus.
“Dear Katrina Armstrong, the interim president of Columbia University,” Professor Shai Davidai, a faculty member who is one of the most renown pro-Israel activists in higher education, wrote in an open letter published on the X social media platform. “At some point your bulls—t needs to be called out. At some point, your silence must be addressed. Why haven’t you said anything about CU Apartheid Divest, the faculty supported organization that operates like an ideological terrorist cell? (They would never strap-on a suicide belt, but they praise and support those who do).”
Shai then enumerated a slew of grievances regarding the university’s handling of pro-Hamas and anti-Zionist extremists, including its declining to ever disavow Middle East Studies professor Joseph Massad, who praised Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel and described the men who paraglided into the Nova Music Festival to murder the young people there as “the air force of the Palestinian resistance.” He also cited the university’s allowing pro-Hamas students to crash a memorial service for the men, women, and children who Hamas murdered on the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack.
“You know perfectly well that they aren’t criticizing Israel’s policies. You know perfectly well that they’re criticizing its existence,” he continued. “It doesn’t take much to say that praising the death of Israelis is unacceptable. Silence isn’t violence, but it surely enables it. And true leaders never remain silent. Shame on you for not saying anything. Shame on you for your silence.”
The Algemeiner has asked Columbia University to respond to Davidai’s allegations and will update this story if the school responds.
Davidai’s missive follows 15 months of explosions of antisemitic hatred and extremism on Columbia University’s campus, a trend which began immediately after the Oct. 7 massacre. As The Algemeiner has previously reported, the treatment to which pro-Israel Jewish students, faculty, and staff have been subjected since that day is unprecedented in the school’s history. Jewish students have been beaten up, battered with hate speech, and even prevented from publicly promoting their own self defense.
The professor, a native of Israel, has himself been allegedly persecuted for criticizing the university’s alleged indifference to the proliferation of pro-Hamas sentiment.
Columbia launched an investigation of Davidai in February, several months after he described former university president Minouche Shafik as a “coward” for coddling pro-Hamas activists who, after the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, waged a campaign of harassment, intimidation, and violence to demoralize Jewish students and pressure the university into boycotting Israel. The immediate cause cited for the inquiry, as told to The Algemeiner by the professor, was a series of spurious accusations that his denunciations of mass casualty events inspired by jihadist extremism equated to racism against Muslims and minorities of color.
Undeterred by what appeared to Davidai and his lawyers as a cynical attempt to use the disciplinary system to silence a political dissident and shroud him in suspicion, the professor continued advocating for Israel’s existence and Jewish civil rights all the way up to the first anniversary of Oct. 7, a day which saw dueling demonstrations held by pro-Hamas and pro-Israel students across the campus. It also saw a fateful exchange of words between Davidai and a Columbia administrator, Cas Holloway, whom the professor reproached for permitting pro-Hamas students to use the Oct. 7 anniversary for celebrating the terrorist organization’s atrocities, which included wantonly murdering Israelis, sexually assaulting Jewish women, and kidnapping over 200 hostages.
Columbia and Davidai’s legal team interpreted what transpired between the professor and Holloway differently. Davidai defended his approach as a genuine expression of grief and concern for the welfare of Jewish students, while Columbia felt that an unmoored professor had engaged in “threats of intimidation, harassment, or other threatening behavior.” Following the incident, Columbia “temporarily” banned him from campus, a severe disciplinary sanction which to this day prevents him from attending university functions and accessing his office.
The professor is not the first to accuse the university of inadequately responding to the misconduct of pro-Hamas activists.
In August, the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce denounced school officials for punishing only a few of the anti-Zionist activists who last spring occupied an administrative building and staged a riot which prompted the university to advise Jews to refrain from coming to campus. According to documents shared by the committee, 18 of the 22 students who were given disciplinary charges for their role in the incident were later upgraded to “good standing” despite the university’s earlier pledge to expel them. Another 31 of 35 who were suspended for illegally occupying the campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” were restored to good standing as well.
Amnestying those students was “disgraceful and unacceptable,” former education committee chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said at the time.
“The vast majority of the student perpetrators remain in good standing,” she added. “By allowing its own disciplinary process to be thwarted by radical students and faculty, Columbia has waved the white flag in surrender while offering up a get-out-of-jail-free card to those who participated in these unlawful actions.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
