“Earlier today, Columbia University refused to let me on campus,” Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia Business School, wrote on X. “Why? Because they cannot protect my safety as a Jewish professor. This is 1938.”

On Monday, April 22, Professor Davidai arrived on campus to find that his security card, which allows him to access university grounds and the classrooms where he teaches, had been deactivated.

The news came even as hundreds of Columbia students used their still-active access cards to reach the pro-Hamas protests taking place on the university’s gated lawns.

“I have not just a civil right, a civil right as a Jewish person to be on campus, I have a right as a professor employed by the university to be on campus,” Davidai said. “They deactivated my card ... they are not letting me on main campus,” he told a crowd of pro-Israel demonstrators at the school’s gate.

In a separate X post, Davidai noted, “To the best of my knowledge, the last time that a professor was denied access to their own university for being Jewish was Nazi Germany.”

The world seems to have forgotten admonitions to “never forget” what happened in the Holocaust. And because history has been forgotten, it is being repeated before our very eyes.

In 1946, German Pastor Martin Niemöller penned a powerful poem on the silence of the German people in the face of the Nazi rise to power:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.

We must not be silent in the face of anti-Jewish hatred on college campuses and spreading across our land. We must counter the hate by standing side by side with Jewish people who are being terrorized right here in America.

That’s why I am instructing my team to make available our “Israel Matters” window stickers for free while supplies last. Get YOUR sticker today and let our Jewish friends know they are not alone.

Finally, I ask you to pray. Pray for the Jewish students and faculty at affected campuses. Pray for our Jewish friends and neighbors. But pray most of all for the pro-Hamas protesters, that their hearts might be turned from hatred to the true and abiding love of our Savior.

Mat Staver
Chairman
Christians in Defense of Israel

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SOURCE:

Andrews, Desheania, Isabel Keane, and Ronny Reyes. “Outspoken Jewish Professor Barred from Columbia Campus — but Administration Turns Blind Eye to Even Bigger Tent City Springing Up.” New York Post, April 22, 2024. Nypost.com/2024/04/22/us-news/columbia-professor-and-outspoken-israel-supporter-shai-davidai-says-hes-been-barred-from-the-main-campus/.