Columbia professor slams college management as anti-Israel agitators wreak havoc at Barnard

Anti-Israel protests broke out at Barnard School final week, and Columbia affiliate professor Shai Davidai is asking out college students and college members.

“These protests that we noticed two days in the past, the violent taking on of a corridor at Barnard, it’s one of many similar protests that began on Oct. 12, 2023,” Davidai instructed Fox Information Digital. “Hate doesn’t go away by itself. Extremism doesn’t go away by itself. If you happen to don’t cope with it, it stays round.”

The newest protests had been in response to the expulsion of two college students who allegedly barged right into a Columbia College classroom in January and threw flyers crammed with hateful and antisemitic rhetoric. 

Anti-Israel protesters demonstrated at Barnard School in February 2025. (Getty; X)

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The professor instructing the course, Avi Shilon, instructed the Occasions of Israel that he invited the protesters to affix the category, however they refused and continued shouting as a substitute. 

Following the Barnard college students’ expulsion, greater than 50 anti-Israel agitators took over a constructing on Barnard’s campus, echoing final yr’s takeover of Hamilton Corridor at Columbia College. 

When chatting with Fox Information Digital, Davidai identified that whereas the protests had been bodily going down at Barnard, they had been organized by a Columbia-sanctioned and funded group.

“That is the consequence of 20 years of indoctrination,” Davidai instructed Fox Information Digital. “We’ve indoctrinated college students and they aren’t the issue. The issue has at all times been the professors who’ve been indoctrinating them.”

Nevertheless, Davidai says he has heard from Jewish and non-Jewish college students alike that they’re fed up with the protests.

“They see no accountability, and so they’re simply sick of it,” Davidai stated. “I obtained emails from dad and mom saying, ‘What are we paying $90,000 for? So, then Barnard can go and clear up the mess of the scholars who obtained to stroll scot-free?’ It doesn’t make any sense.”

Anti-Israel scholar protesters show exterior Barnard School in New York on Feb. 27, 2025. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP by way of Getty Photographs)

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Davidai says he has tried to interact with different college on the problems, however that in a single case, a scholar intervened and pulled the opposite college member out of the dialog. He says there are “radical college students” who’re telling college “what to do and what to say.”

Along with the school, Davidai sees an issue with Columbia’s management. He says that former Columbia College President Minouche Shafik “didn’t know what she was going into” and “was a coward.” He locations heavier blame on Interim President Katrina Armstrong, who he says is “incompetent.”

Davidai doesn’t suppose all hope is misplaced for Columbia and believes there’s a approach for the college to show issues round.

“You kick out the indoctrinaters, you kick out the professors [who] brazenly assist Hamas and different U.S.-designated terror organizations. You kick out the scholars that blatantly assist massacres of Jews and Israelis, and also you make room for professors who need to educate and for college students who need to be taught.”

An anti-Israel demonstrator holds a flag on the rooftop of Hamilton Corridor at Columbia College in New York on April 30, 2024. (Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg by way of Getty Photographs)

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Neither Barnard School nor Columbia College instantly responded to Fox Information Digital’s requests for remark.

Barnard School and Columbia College have a storied historical past. Initially, Columbia was an all-male college and Barnard, an all-female college, turned a part of the Columbia system in 1900. The 2 nonetheless share educational sources and each establishments have courses which can be accessible to Columbia and Barnard college students.

On Feb. 26, Columbia tweeted out an announcement saying that “the disruption of educational actions isn’t acceptable conduct.”

Instantly following the category disruption in January, interim President Armstrong condemned the incident in an announcement, saying that the agitators’ actions went in opposition to the college’s guidelines. Moreover, Columbia suspended an alleged participant with ties to the college and launched an investigation.

Barnard President Laura Ann Rosenbury printed an op-ed on the scenario on Monday within the Chronicle of Larger Schooling entitled, “When Pupil Protest Goes Too Far.” 

“This disruption was not designed to increase considering or advance civil discourse. As an alternative, it was a calculated act of intimidation, with the disruptors taunting and loudly talking over the professor, distributing antisemitic flyers, and refusing to affix the dialogue even when the professor graciously invited them to take a seat in on the category,” Rosenbury writes. She went on to say the protesters actions had been “completely at odds with our mission.”