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