Pro-Israel Columbia professor Shai Davidai resigns

Shai Davidai resigned as soon as the administration fully cleared him in a harassment investigation.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Shai Davidai, a fierce Israel supporter, left his position as an assistant professor at Columbia University hours after being informed Wednesday that an internal investigation, which began in February 2024, had cleared him of any wrongdoing.

Davidai posted a short letter from the Office of Institutional Equity on social media that said it had “closed its investigations relating to you without issuing any findings or conclusions of wrongdoing and without imposing any discipline or penalty on you.”

His comment on the letter was pointed.

“BOOM,” he wrote. “(Please help me spread this. @Columbia tried to smear my name. I wouldn’t let them. Today, they finally admitted that I hadn’t done anything wrong.)”

Maryam Iqbal, who was a leading member of the school’s virulently anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, had accused Davidai of harassment just a few months after antisemitism on the campus exploded following the Oct. 7 Hamas-led terror attack on Israel.

Davidai became a symbol of Jewish pride to many after speaking out loudly and consistently against the administration’s silence in the face of the constant intimidation and even physical assault against Jewish students.

He also demanded action against faculty members who created a hostile environment against Jews and Israelis in their classes.

Iqbal had charged that Davidai edited a video of her at a protest, “splicing in clips of Hamas leaders,” which he allegedly circulated “to massive Zionist accounts” that resulted, she said, in “nonstop rape threats, deportation calls, and a wave of violent incitement.”

Davidai immediately labeled the inquiry a “clear act of retaliation and an attempt to silence me.”

Shortly after Iqbal’s claim was recorded, Columbiatemporarily suspended Davidai, charging that he “repeatedly harassed and intimidated university employees in violation of university policy.”

Davidai rejected the claim and charged that the university was employing a double standard when it came to free speech.

“The only person that got suspended from campus is the Jewish professor speaking up against the protests,” he said. “The professors and other people have said and posted horrible things, and yet I’m the only one suspended.”

In contrast to the letter Davidai received exonerating him of any wrongdoing, Iqbal said she received a missive stating that the investigation was automatically closed because “as of July 9, Shai Davidai is no longer employed at the university.”

Davidai did not announce his resignation, which was later confirmed by the university.

It was publicized instead on social media via news of a letter sent from the dean of Columbia’s business school to his colleagues, telling them that the Israeli-born professor had “decided to depart Columbia.”

The letter also wished him well, noting that during his six-year tenure, Davidai published more than two dozen articles in scholarly journals and won a Rising Star designation from Poets and Quants, a publication that covers the graduate business education market.