A Pro-Israel Jewish Professor Banned From Columbia Campus

The madness at Morningside Heights continues. But what do you expect from a school that has such pro-Hamas professors as Joseph Massad, Hamid Dabashi, and Rashid Khalidi on its faculty?

Now an Israeli professor at Columbia, Shai Davidai, has been banned — temporarily — from the campus. He cannot access his office, nor attend university functions. He has, you see, been consigned to the outer darkness by Columbia administrators for being too aggressive in his attempts to get university administrators to do more to protect Jewish students from antisemitic demonstrators, and for showing up to be a one-man disrupter of these demonstrations and very public supporter of the Jewish state.

More on this disturbing punishment of Davidai can be found here: “‘Don’t Say Sorry’: Columbia University Bans Pro-Israel Professor From Campus,” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, October 16, 2024:

Columbia University has “temporarily” banished its most distinguished pro-Israel Jewish professor — Shai Davidai — from campus property, a severe disciplinary sanction which prevents him from attending university functions and accessing his office.

Speaking to The Algemeiner on Wednesday morning, Davidai denounced the action as retaliation for his much publicized advocacy of Jewish civil rights, unabashed support for Zionism, and condemnations of student and faculty calls for continued acts of terrorism against Israel and other Western countries. He has, he noted, been targeted by the university before. Last semester, it launched an investigation of his conduct following spurious accusations that his denouncing terrorism amounted to anti-Muslim bigotry.

Now, the university has allegedly found cause to discipline Davidai under a microscope, punishing him for an exchange of words which took place during dueling demonstrations marking the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. According to Davidai’s own social media account, as swarms of pro-Hamas students bellowed slogans demanding violence against Israelis, the Columbia professor filmed himself reproaching the university’s chief operating officer, Cas Holloway, for permitting anti-Israel activists to hold a celebration of the terror attack — in which Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered Jewish children, sexually assaulted Jewish women and men, and kidnapped over 200 hostages during their rampage.

Footage of the encounter shows Davidai approaching Holloway and requesting that he explain the pro-Hamas demonstration’s concurrence with a Jewish-student led vigil, a circumstance that many people on campus felt was an injustice and desecration of Jewish life. Davidai then vowed to walk with Holloway until he received a sufficient response to his concerns, a not unusual behavior on Ivy League campuses, where administrative buildings have been illegally occupied and presidential offices stormed by anti-Israel demonstrators over the past year. Earlier in the day, Davidai himself was stalked by pro-Hamas activists and briefly jousted with two public safety officers about whether his freedom of movement had been violated.

“Cas, what do you have to say?” Davidai said to Holloway, with whom he crossed paths incidentally. “How could you allow this to happen on Oct. 7? … You have to do your job, and I will not let you rest until they let us rest.”

During the meeting, Davidai initiated a conversation between Holloway and an Israeli student who, like Davidai, pleaded for answers.

Holloway apologized to the student, to which Davidai responded, “Don’t say sorry if you let this happen. This is your responsibility. This is not being sorry … I’m filing a complaint with you right now, Cas. You’re the COO … You know it’s unsanctioned; you know they violated every time, place, and manner. They are hiding their faces.”

Holloway then proceeded to terminate the conversation, prompting Davidai to say, “I’m walking with you. Where are we going, Cas? Because Jewish and Israeli students don’t get to go, so where are we going? I’m walking with you. I’m not obstructing you.”

During Wednesday’s interview with the Algemeiner, Davidai defended his approach as a genuine expression of grief and concern for the welfare of Jewish students.

“People are free to see exactly the videos and see, you know, what did or did not happen and judge for themselves,” he said. “That is why I call this a clear act or retaliation. My lawyers got on a phone call with them on Oct. 7 [of this year] and were told that the university is going to suspend my ability to be on campus. On that day, the university found that the most important thing is to remove me from campus. I am, to the best of my knowledge, the only professor who has been removed from campus since Oct. 7 [2023].”

Davidai went on to point to faculty conduct which has been covered by The Algemeiner, including Columbia professor Joseph Massad publishing in Electronic Intifada an essay cheering Hamas’s atrocities as “awesome” and describing men who paraglided into a music festival to kill young people as “the air force of the Palestinian resistance.”

But nothing has happened to Joseph Massad, the man who praised the Hamas attack in which 1,200 Israeli men, women, and children were raped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered as “awesome.” The Columbia administration did not lock him out of his office, or keep him from appearing on campus, as it has done to Professor Shai Davidai. Nor did any of the other faculty members who praised Hamas, or took part in demonstrations demanding that “from the river to the sea/Palestine will be free” — which is a call for the destruction of Israel, the expulsion or killing of all of its Jewish inhabitants, and its replacement by a 23rd Arab state — suffer any consequences. No, exactly one faculty member has been punished for his behavior, in standing up for Israel and trying to ensure the safety of Jewish students on campus. That is Shai Davidai, who filmed his walk, and talk, with Columbia’s chief operating officer, Cas Holloway who, Shai Davidai believes, “has an antisemitism problem.”

Davidai continued, “The only person who was removed from campus is the one that exposed the chief operating officer’s antisemitic problem. And I say this, you know, I don’t know if he is or isn’t an antisemite. I do know that he’s awfully comfortable with antisemitism and that he has an antisemitism problem.”

According to Columbia University, the campus ban, which does not affect Davidai’s compensation or employment status, was prompted by “threats of intimidation, harassment, or other threatening behavior.”

Samantha Slater, a university spokesperson, continued: “Columbia has consistently and continually respected Assistant Professor Davidai’s right to free speech and to express his views. His freedom of speech has not been limited and is not being limited now. Columbia, however, does not tolerate threats of intimidation, harassment, or other threatening behavior by its employees. Because Assistant Professor Davidai repeatedly harassed and intimidated university employees in violation of university policy, we have temporarily limited his access to campus while he undertakes appropriate training on our policies governing the behavior of our employees.”…

Could the walk Davidai took with a not-exactly-welcoming Cas Holloway, and their conversation be considered “harassment” and “intimidation”? As I read the account of that conversation, Davidai’s questions were perfectly appropriate, and there was no sign of any “harassment” or “intimidation” of Columbia’s chief operating officer by someone who, after all, is only an untenured assistant professor and in no position to intimidate the university’s COO.