Columbia suspends outspoken pro-Israel prof for alleged harassment -- but didn’t punish faculty member who called Oct. 7 attack ‘astounding’
Davidai claims he is innocent, and is only being targeted for highlighting the indifference of certain Columbia officials to disruptive anti-Israel protests.
Despite its actions against Davidai, Columbia has done nothing against Joseph Massad, another professor who published an article lauding Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis.
Columbia University has temporarily suspended a staunch pro-Israel professor, but has not taken similar measures against a professor who once praised the Oct. 7 massacre as a “war of liberation” and “astounding.”
“The University has decided to not allow me to be on campus anymore,” Davidai stated following the announcement of his suspension. “Why? Because of Oct. 7. Because I was not afraid to stand up to the hateful mob.”
Columbia University spokesperson Millie Wert told the Columbia Spectator that Davidai was suspended because he supposedly “repeatedly harassed and intimidated University employees in violation of University policy.”
Davidai, however, says he is being punished because he shared videos on social media of him confronting Chief Operating Officer Cas Holloway and Assistant Director of Public Safety Bobby Lau during an anti-Israel event at the school that took place on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre.
Davidai confronted the officials because he believed they did nothing to stop disruptive protesters during the Oct. 7 protest. He told the Spectator that he is innocent, and claims that he was suspended because the two officials “don’t like being exposed.”
“I’m the only professor who’s been suspended,” he told the Spectator. “Think about all the professors, everything that they’ve done. You know, people that have said and posted horrible things, and yet I’m the only one suspended.”
Even though it suspended Davidai for his alleged infractions, Columbia has done nothing about another professor, Joseph Massad, who wrote an article praising the Oct. 7 massacre–the day after the atrocity took place.
Massad, professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History, published the article on Oct. 7, 2023, on Electronic Intifada. In it, he lauded Hamas terrorists’ “takeover of several Israeli settler-colonies,” during which they murdered hundreds of Israeli citizens, including women and children.
Massad said that the terrorists’ “major achievement” during the massacre was “the death blow to any confidence that Israeli colonists had in their military and its ability to protect them.” He seemingly rejoiced that the flight of Israeli civilians “may prove to be a permanent exodus.”
He also said that the sight of the Hamas assault on the Jewish state was “astounding,” and claimed that “the days to come will surely be crucial in determining if this is the start of the Palestinian War of Liberation or yet another battle in the interminable struggle between the colonizer and the colonized.”
Campus Reform has contacted Columbia University and Shai Davidai for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
