Columbia University suspends outspoken pro-Israel professor for harassment | Protest news

A divisive and outspoken pro-Israel professor at Columbia University in New York City was temporarily suspended after the prestigious school said he “repeatedly harassed and intimidated university employees in violation of university policy.”

Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at the business school, has become a fixture on campus and on social media for his aggressive, pro-Israel advocacy and criticism of pro-Palestinian students and faculty, whom he regularly accuses of supporting “terrorism ‘.

Davidai announced his temporary suspension on his Instagram account on Tuesday. In an expletive-laden video, he said: “The university has decided not to let me be on campus anymore. My job. Why? Because of October 7th. Because I wasn’t afraid to stand up to the hateful crowd.”

He said he was suspended in retaliation for posting multiple videos online of his conversations with university public safety officials last Oct. 7, during a protest by the pro-Palestine Columbia University Apartheid Divest student group. He suggested he would sue the university over the suspension and said he was “not going anywhere.”

“I don’t care about my future,” he later wrote on

https://x.com/ShaiDavidai/status/1846347729355559296

Davidai recently used his professor who he suggested was “OK with rape, murder.” , torture and kidnapping”.

Student complaints

Davidai has also harassed and deceived countless students, many of whom have come forward to report his abuse over the past year. Some of those students took to social media after Davidai’s suspension to criticize the university for taking action against him too late.

“I’ve been reporting him non-stop since October 2023 for many things, including making video edits of me, and it wasn’t until he went absolutely crazy with Columbia administrators that they finally took action against him,” one student wrote on X on Wednesday.

“The Columbia business professor who targeted me for months, retweeted inappropriate comments about my body and claimed I was part of Hamas when we evacuated my family from Gaza (we are Palestinian Christians) has now been banned from Columbia’s campus for harassment, another wrote.

She added that Davidai, among other things, made a video in which he said the U.S. National Guard should be called in against student protesters and called campus security officers “members of Nazi Germany.”

https://x.com/itslaylas/status/1846329303006695454

Despite numerous reports accusing him of harassment, Davidai’s harassment of Cas Holloway, the university’s Chief Operating Officer, appears to have crossed a line for the university’s administration.

‘Threatening behavior’

“Columbia has consistently and continuously respected Assistant Professor Davidai’s right to freedom of speech and expression of opinion. His freedom of speech has not been and will not be limited now,” university spokesperson Millie Wert wrote in a statement to the Columbia Daily Spectator, the university’s student newspaper.

“However, Columbia will not tolerate threats of harassment, intimidation or other threatening behavior from its employees.”

Davidai was barred from campus, but the suspension will not affect his compensation or status as a faculty member, and the university offered him alternative off-campus office space.

He will be allowed back on campus once he has “completed appropriate training on our policies regarding the conduct of our employees,” the spokesperson added.

Davidai was denied access to campus last spring after announcing his intention to enter the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” a protest camp set up by students, and calling on his supporters to join him.

Last April, Columbia University suspended a student activist after a video surfaced of the student saying, “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” Three university deans also resigned after exchanging texts during a meeting about anti-Semitism on campus that the university said “disturbingly touched on old anti-Semitic tropes.”

The university has suspended another student and former Israeli soldier accused of spraying chemicals on pro-Palestinian protesters. At the height of protests last year, administrators twice called police to break up student demonstrations, leading to dozens of arrests.

Columbia University’s protest camp inspired dozens of others on campuses across the US last year.

The university was widely criticized for its suppression of the protests, but also for its oppression came under intense pressure from donors and lawmakers who accused the country of supporting anti-Semitism on campus, leading to the resignation of Columbia President Minouche Shafik over the summer.