A Columbia University professor who has been an outspoken critic of the university’s handling of continuous pro-Palestinian student protests suggested that the university’s administration may be “negotiating” with the protest’s leadership.
Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia Business School, was seen on Monday in a viral video having a combative exchange with university administrators when he was told his staff ID had been “deactivated,” stopping him from entering campus due to safety concerns.
“I got a tip that the administration is negotiating with the leaders of the pro-terror organization. The same organization whose members called Hamas to kill Jewish students,” Davidai wrote on X, likely referring to the organizers of the protest, the Columbia University Apartheid Divest and Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, which have been adamant that its members have been nonviolent. “If this is true, this is huge. Columbia is negotiating with terrorists.”
The protest encampment was set up at the university in opposition to Israel and in support of Palestinians amid the conflict in Gaza. An estimated 200 pro-Palestinian protesters were on the campus Monday morning.
“Earlier today, @Columbia University refused to let me onto campus. Why? Because they cannot protect my safety as a Jewish professor,” Davidai said, adding a reference to Jewish staff being dismissed from universities in Nazi Germany, “This is 1938.”
In the video, Davidai was seen pointing at Columbia University Chief Operating Officer Cas Holloway and Vice President for Public Safety Gerald Lewis, who were standing nearby.
“This is Cas Holloway, the COO, this is Gerald Lewis. They were in the meeting when I asked them if Hamas is a terror organization, and they couldn’t say that it is a terrorist organization,” Davidai said to the crowd surrounding him.
“Shai, we are willing to take you to the Math lawn,” Holloway stated to Davidai in front of the crowd, reiterating what he had told the professor in an email on Sunday.
“I am a professor here, I have every right to be everywhere on campus. You cannot let people that support Hamas on campus, and me, a professor, not go on campus,” he demanded. “Let me in now.”
The crowd then began to chant, “Let Shai in!”
Holloway had emailed Davidai earlier, telling him that due to the safety of students and colleagues, he was urged to change plans for any counter-protest events.
“Because of the obvious risk to the safety of students and other members of our community, we strongly urge you to ask any students and colleagues who may have planned to join you to change their plans as well,” Holloway said in the email. “Obviously, the safety of our community has to be our top priority right now. As a faculty member, you have a fiduciary duty to do everything in your power to help keep our students and campus safe.”
The Jewish professor had promoted the gathering at Columbia on his social media account, calling for a “PEACEFUL sit in.”
“Insane!” tech billionaire Elon Musk wrote on social media about the professor being denied access.
“Get over yourself dude, you have had zero threats to your safety despite spending months harassing your student body and playing victim,” journalist Zaid Jilani remarked.
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“Columbia is currently an unsafe place for me. It’s also a place a pro-Hamas terror organization keeps protestors in fences and brainwashes them about me,” the professor said in another social media post on Monday.
Davidai called on everyone in the “antisemitism task force” at Columbia to resign.
More than 100 student protesters were arrested and suspended for refusing to leave their “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” last week but now, a new tent city of 200 protesters has been growing in numbers on Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus.
