💭 University’s COO tells Shai Davidai that he’s barred from area of anti-Israel encampment ‘to maintain safety of the community’; Congress members demand Jewish students be protected.
An outspoken Israeli professor was blocked from entering a portion of the Columbia University campus and Jewish members of Congress demanded action from the administration on Monday as pro-Palestinian protests against Israel continued to roil the Manhattan university.
Shai Davidai, an Israeli assistant professor at Columbia University’s business school, had announced on social media that he planned to enter the university’s main campus on Monday morning to hold a “peaceful sit-in” in the area of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who have occupied the campus lawn since last week.
But the university deactivated Davidai’s Columbia ID card, preventing him from accessing the main campus, which is currently restricted only to those who hold valid Columbia IDs. Davidai teaches at the business school, a separate area from the main campus, and still has access to that location.
The university’s chief operating officer, Cas Holloway, met Davidai at the entrance to tell him he would not be allowed in.
About an hour earlier, Davidai had posted a message he had received from Holloway, saying he would be allowed to hold a counter-protest at an area that is separate from the encampment, with the protection of public safety officers. Decrying the offer as a “continuation of six months of gaslighting and degrading the Jewish community,” Davidai rejected the offer, tweeting, “F— YOU CAS.”
“This is 1938,” he wrote in another post, referring to the dismissal of Jewish staff from universities in Nazi Germany in the years leading up to the Holocaust.
At the university gates, Davidai, who has emerged as a vocal and controversial supporter of Jewish students on campus since shortly after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, addressed a crowd of people who had assembled there.
“I have not just 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 at the entrance, as supporters shouted “shame” and students watched from inside the university fence. “Being Jewish in public has become a political statement,” Davidai said. “It’s not a privilege, it’s a right, and they’re not allowing me that right.”
The pro-Israel supporters appeared to be mostly older adults, not students. Many Jewish students had left campus due to safety concerns, Davidai said. Many had also headed home for the Passover holiday.
