Columbia professor Shai Davidai protects students, and his own family, from the pro-Hamas campus mobs

Photos: AP Images

He’s a secular left-winger from Tel Aviv who fought the Israeli government in last year’s protests — and he has now emerged as Israel’s strongest defender on the roiling Ivy League campuses. Even as Jewish donors despair of America’s elite universities, Columbia University Professor Shai Davidai is determined to stand and fight.

IT was one of  those rare occasions where words speak far louder than a thousand pictures. On October 18, days after the slaughter of many of his countrymen, Israeli-raised Columbia Business School professor Shai Davidai took to the university’s quad. He asked the small group of Jewish students who’d turned up that evening holding signs calling for the release of the hostages to video him and share what he was about to say with the world.

Then came one of the most extraordinary, painful scenes of the post-October 7 era. The 41-year-old lecturer proceeded to emit a cry of grief almost primal in its pain. “My name is Shai Davidai!” he screamed, clearly struggling to hold back tears. “I’m a professor at Columbia Business School! I am Israeli! But before all of that, I am a dad!... And I want you to know: We cannot protect your children from pro-terrorist student organizations because the president of Columbia University will not speak out against pro-terrorist student organizations! Because the president of Harvard University, because the president of Stanford, because the president of Berkeley, will not speak out against pro-terrorist student organizations!”

Davidai’s passionate denunciation poured forth for ten minutes, as he spoke without a script, his words wrenched from a heart that had been shocked into action. The video, titled “An Open Letter to Every Parent in America,” went viral and became a cry heard across the Jewish world.

Davidai’s warning to Jewish parents was well ahead of his time. Months before the media caught on to the fact that the campuses of elite American universities had become hotbeds of anti-Semitism, while the vast majority of the public was unaware of what was happening in the hallowed halls of America’s most prestigious institutions, the Columbia professor was the first to sound the alarm about the Ivy League’s takeover by extremists.

Six months after the first viral video, came a second one. On April 22 of this year, Professor Davidai attempted to enter the Columbia University building where he teaches to conduct a “peaceful sit-in” in the area where pro-Hamas protests were being held, only to find that, surprisingly, his access card had been deactivated. Columbia’s administration had anticipated Davidai’s attempt, and the university’s chief operating officer, Cas Holloway, was waiting for him at the entrance. Holloway told him that he would not be allowed in “to maintain the safety of the Columbia community,” but suggested he take his protest elsewhere. “No!” Davidai responded, “I am a professor here! I have every right to be anywhere on campus! You cannot let people who support Hamas on campus and not let me, a professor, go on campus! Let me in now!” The crowd began to chant “Let Shai in!” as Holloway remained stone-faced.

Climbing onto a fence, Davidai shouted, “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! We just want to be Jewish in public!” The video ends with a police officer, acting on Columbia University’s orders, escorting Davidai and his supporters away from the premises.

The second viral video confirmed what Davidai had warned about six months earlier — that the powers-that-be were firmly aligned with the pro-Hamas movement  — but it also underlined something else: the Columbia professor’s transformation from academic to campaigning activist — the face of Jewish resistance on university campuses. The once-obscure liberal academic has become the most prominent and fearless truth teller about the moral rot at the heart of the Ivies. Along the way, he’s lost friends, received threats, become the target of attacks, and had to rethink his future in the United States. But he’s also gained colleagues, inspired hope, defended Jewish pride, and become a guardian for thousands of students.