Columbia’s most outspoken critic of anti-Israel protesters refused entry to campus for pro-Jewish rally
A Columbia University professor who has been a vocal critic of the administration’s response to the ongoing anti-Israel student protests was barred from campus Monday after he tried to lead a pro-Jewish rally at the Ivy League college.
Israel-born Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia Business School and an outspoken supporter of the Jewish state, was told that his ID had been “deactivated” — even as a massive new tent city sprang up on the Morningside Heights campus with some 200 protesters — all of whom would have had to use their Columbia IDs to get in.
He said administrators told him they banned him from campus because they could not ensure his safety.
University administrators turned a blind eye to the new protest camp — days after calling the NYPD to break up a previous protest and haul away the protesters.
Protesters on and around campus have been filmed making actively pro-Hamas and antisemitic statements — including one alleged student who held a sign suggesting pro-Israel demonstrators should be the next target of Hamas terrorists.
A Jewish Columbia student filed an NYPD hate crime report Monday saying that he was accosted and hit in the head with rocks by pro-Palestinian protesters on campus after he arrived with Israeli flags on Saturday night.
On Monday, many of the demonstrators who arrived at campus with Davidai to show solidarity with Columbia’s Jewish community were also turned away at the gates of the Ivy Leave school — though some with active Columbia IDs were allowed in.
“They are not letting me on main campus,” Davidai told a crowd of pro-Israel rallies at the school’s gate.
The growing chaos at the university has only increased calls for university President Minouche Shafik to resign over her handling of the situation.
Just a day after House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik demanded Shafik retire, the rest of New York’s Republican delegation signed a letter calling on the embattled school president to step down.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has slammed the situation at the university following a meeting with Shafik, city hall and the NYPD.
“The recent harassment and rhetoric is vile and abhorrent,” Hochul said in a statement on X. “Every student deserves to be safe.”
Davidai’s rejection from the campus of his own university prompted a crowd of pro-Israel protesters to shout, “Let him in!” and “Shame!”
“I have not just a civil right, a civil right as a Jewish person to be on campus, I have a right as a professor employed by the university to be on campus,” Davidai said. “They deactivated my card.”
“They are not letting me on main campus,” he told a crowd of pro-Israel rallies at the school’s gate.
Davidai noted the “irony” that his card still grants him access to the university’s Manhattanville campus farther uptown on West 130th Street, where he teaches at the business school.
“I was just told by [administrators] that I am [to be] let on the campus of the business school where I’m teaching tomorrow,” he said.
“So they are willing to use Jewish brains, but they don’t want to let Jewish people in.”
Davidai, however, pointed out that the administration has continued to protect the safety of the anti-Israel protesters.
“We know whose safety they can ensure — for the past five days, they’ve been ensuring the safety of the students who are calling on Hamas, to target Jewish students. That’s the safety that they are ensuring,” he said.
He encouraged other Israel supporters to exercise caution as they encounter the protests.
“I ask of you, if you have a Columbia ID, please go in, take videos — do not engage. If they don’t let you in, and then document the fact that they’re not letting other Jewish people into campus,” he added.
US Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fl.) slammed the university for barring Davidai from campus, comparing it to the Nazi’s antisemitic policies.
“We’ve seen this before. When Jews were told not to go places, when people stood together barring them into buildings,” Moskowitz said during a news conference on campus Monday.
“This is the tactics of the Nazis, where Jews were not safe to go places and we’re told, ‘Please don’t come here because we can’t keep you safe,’” he added. “That is the behavior that we’re seeing on campus.”
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) described the protest as “unacceptable,” but stopped short of calling for Shafiks’ resignation, claiming the president still has time to take the right action.
“Both elected representatives and members of the administration’s of academic institutions need to combat what is this dramatic rise of antisemitism and a feeling of insecurity from Jews on campus,” Goldman said.
Fellow Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), echoed Goldman’s words but said it is now up to the university to prove itself by quelling the demonstration and standing by its Jewish students and staff.
“I think the pressure is on for the university president to step up and act. I think there has to be accountability,” Gottheimer said. “We’ve seen good steps forward, but the bottom line is we’re gonna be watching every single day.”
Davidai’s ban from the main campus comes as in-person classes at the prestigious Ivy League university were canceled Monday ahead of the start of Passover as anti-Israel protests continue to roil on at the college.
Mike Gerber, the NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters, told reporters Monday morning that because Columbia is a private property, their is a limit on what police can do unless there is an imminent threat to safety.
“Absent from ongoing crime, we can not just go onto Columbia campus as we see fit,” Gerber said. “It is up to the university to decide whether or not they want us on campus.
“As a general matter, and this goes back many years, Columbia does not want NYPD on campus,” he added.
Gerber, however, said that the NYPD is aware of the ongoing situation at the campus and that officers would respond if violence were to break out.
NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Tarik Sheppard added that there have been “no credible threats” as of yet coming from the protest.
Mayor Eric Adams condemned the protests on Sunday following video of pro-Hamas chanting, assuring residents that the NYPD will investigate all incidents of antisemitism happening on campus.
“I am horrified and disgusted with the antisemitism being spewed at and around the Columbia University campus — like the example of a young woman holding a sign with an arrow pointing to Jewish students stating ‘Al-Qasam’s Next Targets,’ or another where a woman is literally yelling ‘We are Hamas,’ or another where groups of students are chanting ‘We don’t want no Zionists here’ — and I condemn this hate speech in the strongest of terms,” Adams said in a statement.
“Supporting a terrorist organization that aims to kill Jews is sickening and despicable.”
Shafik, who has vowed to crack down on antisemitism, told students in an email that was also shared to the Ivy League college’s website that they “need a reset” as the heated demonstrations enter a sixth day.
“I am deeply saddened by what is happening on our campus. Our bonds as a community have been severely tested in ways that will take a great deal of time and effort to reaffirm,” Shafik wrote.
“Students across an array of communities have conveyed fears for their safety and we have announced additional actions we are taking to address security concerns.”
Those fears, expressed by many Jewish students, were also addressed on Sunday by a prominent rabbi at the school, who urged Columbia and Barnard students to go home — and stay there until conflicts on campus dissipate.
