What’s New?
Columbia University has temporarily banned an assistant professor of management from being on campus after finding that he had repeatedly harassed and intimidated two university administrators he’d accused of failing to protect Jewish students and employees during protests over the Israel-Hamas war.
The Details
Shai Davidai contends that the university is retaliating against him for his social-media posts calling out Cas Holloway, Columbia’s chief operating officer, and Bobby Lau, assistant director of public safety. He accused them of allowing pro-Palestinian protesters to shout slogans and act in a manner that he said threatened and intimidated Jewish people like himself.
Davidai posted video clips of himself confronting the administrators as they walked across campus on October 7 amid dueling protests commemorating Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel. In a video posted on X, he told Lau, “You are such a useless administrator. But you know what, there were so many useless administrators in Nazi Germany. And you know what? After the war, they said they did everything they could.” He also posted videos of himself confronting Holloway. In one, he called Columbia’s chief operating officer “indifferent” and added that “hatred happens when people like you are indifferent.”
In a video statement posted on Instagram late Tuesday and apparently later removed, Davidai said he was being punished “because I was not afraid to stand up to the hateful mob and because I was not afraid to expose Mr. fucking Cas Holloway for not doing anything about it.” Neither Holloway nor Lau responded to requests for comment.
A Columbia spokeswoman, Samantha A. Slater, issued a statement Wednesday saying the university “has consistently and continually respected” Davidai’s free-speech rights. But because he has “repeatedly harassed and intimidated university employees in violation of university policy, we have temporarily limited his access to campus while he undertakes appropriate training on our policies governing the behavior of our employees.”
She said Davidai is not teaching this semester, and that the temporary ban on accessing the campus won’t affect his pay or his status as an employee.
In an interview Wednesday, Davidai said that Holloway and Lau refused to intervene when students and employees protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza started marching through campus in what he considered a deliberate attempt to intimidate Jewish people. He said his objections aren’t with the protesters, some of whom he acknowledged don’t support Hamas, but with the administration for allowing a protest to take place that he said celebrated violence.
“I have spoken up very fiercely about protests in support of Hamas, but I have never harassed any individual on this university,” he said. “We’re talking about open support for terrorism and the rape of young women and yet people are offended by me telling the university’s chief operating officer to go fuck himself.” He said he has “mixed feelings” about the requirement that he undergo training about appropriate behavior, saying he’s being punished without due process exclusively for his social-media posts.
In an Instagram post Wednesday night, Davidai said he’s depressed and “licking my wounds” but vowed, to his supporters, to keep fighting antisemitism. “You are my community at a time where my own community — Columbia University — has all but shunned me,” he said.
The Backdrop
Columbia has been the epicenter of protests over the war in Gaza, which expanded to campuses nationwide at the end of the spring semester. In August, controversy over the Columbia president’s response to those protests led to the resignation of Nemat (Minouche) Shafik.
Across the country, faculty members have been among the most outspoken supporters of students protesting the Israel-Hamas war and some have been disciplined as a result. Others have harshly criticized those protests. At Columbia, faculty members’ support for pro-Palestinian students was tested when an unrecognized coalition of student groups issued a statement endorsing “liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance.” Some faculty members said they disagreed with that sentiment, but supported the group’s right to express it.
The Stakes
As angry rhetoric soars on campuses this fall, both over the war in Gaza, and a bitterly contested U.S. presidential election, colleges will be struggling to draw the line, not only for how students interact, but how faculty members make their voices heard.
In an effort to avoid the chaos of last spring, many campuses have tightened the rules on campus protests this fall, prompting some to argue that their free-speech rights are being violated. Cases like Davidai’s are likely to fuel these ongoing debates over the limits of free speech and where it crosses the line into punishable behavior.
