by Debra Rich Gettleman

It’s about time someone schooled parents on what our finest academic institutions are teaching our kids. Undoubtedly you’ve seen or heard something about our Ivies and their unconditional disdain for Israel. Well, professor Shai Davidai is tired of sitting silent in the face of unmitigated anti-Israel rhetoric on the campus of Columbia Business School.

Davidai’s bio on the Columbia Business School website reads:

“Shai Davidai is Assistant Professor in the Management Division of Columbia Business School. His research examines people’s everyday judgments of themselves, other people, and society as a whole. He studies the psychological forces that shape, distort, and bias people’s perceptions of the world and their influence on people’s judgments, preferences, and choices. His topics of expertise include the psychology of judgment and decision making, economic inequality and social mobility, social comparisons, and zero-sum thinking.”

Who better to speak out on the University’s pro-militant, anti-Israel bias that is endangering the safety of not only Jewish students on campus, but professors like Davidai as well.

In his interview with the New York Post this week, Davidai confessed his own fears of anti-Israel campus activities, “I am 40 years old and I was shivering to come to my own employment. Imagine not being able to go to your work because your boss does not value your, life because your boss supports pro-terror organizations.”

His boss is Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik,  who in failing to stand up for what is right and good and condemn inhuman torture, rape, kidnapping, and murder, shows a tacit acceptance of terrorism and slaughter of innocent civilians. “Where are you, President Shafik of Columbia University?” Davidai pleads. “We are waiting for you to eradicate all pro-terror student organizations from campus.”

The answer from the University? Deafening silence.

One Jewish sophomore at Columbia was quoted in a New York Post article as saying, “I think [Davidai] hit the nail on the head. The silence of the school is really deafening. When people chant, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ that’s calling for the extermination of the Jewish people — and that needs to be condemned,” 

Harvard President, Claudine Gay, under the guise of protecting free speech, has also been complicit in failing to denounce 30+ Palestinian campus groups in their support of Hamas. At Yale University, “Free Palestine” messages were written in chalk around campus. More anti-Israel sentiment is being espoused at Stanford. Silence at the University of Pennsylvania, speaks volumes. In a Sunday op-ed in The Wall Street Journal called “Don’t Hire My Anti-Semitic Law Students,” Steven Davidoff Solomon, a corporate law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the adviser to the Jewish law student association  argued that “The student conduct at Berkeley is part of the broader attitude against Jews on university campuses that made last week’s massacre possible. It is shameful and has been tolerated for too long.”

We are at a pivotal moment in history and we can no longer be silent in the face of the misinformation that is fueling the divide between young and older people in this country. Write to your alma mater. Withhold financial support if the rhetoric being disseminated is antisemitic.  Insist that all students’ safety is protected on campus. Demand that educators present facts not fiction in their critical discussions about the Middle East.

And don’t be afraid to speak out. Like Shai Davidai, be brave. Be unapologetic. Tell the truth. Because even if we aren’t sure who said it, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good [people] do nothing.”

#israel, #shaidavidai, #supportisrael