Columbia professor slams university leadership as anti-Israel agitators wreak havoc at Barnard
Anti-Israel protests broke out at Barnard College last week, and Columbia associate professor Shai Davidai is calling out students and faculty members.
"These protests that we saw two days ago, the violent taking over of a hall at Barnard, it's one of the same protests that started on Oct. 12, 2023," Davidai told Fox News Digital. "Hate doesn't go away on its own. Extremism doesn't go away on its own. If you don't deal with it, it stays around."
The most recent protests were in response to the expulsion of two students who allegedly barged into a Columbia University classroom in January and threw flyers filled with hateful and antisemitic rhetoric.
The professor teaching the course, Avi Shilon, told the Times of Israel that he invited the protesters to join the class, but they refused and continued shouting instead.
Following the Barnard students' expulsion, more than 50 anti-Israel agitators took over a building on Barnard's campus, echoing last year's takeover of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University.
When speaking to Fox News Digital, Davidai pointed out that while the protests were physically taking place at Barnard, they were organized by a Columbia-sanctioned and funded organization.
"This is the consequence of 20 years of indoctrination," Davidai told Fox News Digital. "We have indoctrinated students and they are not the problem. The problem has always been the professors who have been indoctrinating them."
However, Davidai says he has heard from Jewish and non-Jewish students alike that they are fed up with the protests.
"They see no accountability, and they're just sick of it," Davidai said. "I got emails from parents saying, 'What are we paying $90,000 for? So, then Barnard can go and clean up the mess of the students who got to walk scot-free?' It doesn't make any sense."
Davidai says he has tried to engage with other faculty on the issues, but that in one case, a student intervened and pulled the other faculty member out of the conversation. He says there are "radical students" who are telling faculty "what to do and what to say."
In addition to the faculty, Davidai sees a problem with Columbia's leadership. He says that former Columbia University President Minouche Shafik "did not know what she was going into" and "was a coward." He places heavier blame on Interim President Katrina Armstrong, who he says is "incompetent."
Davidai does not think all hope is lost for Columbia and believes there is a way for the university to turn things around.
"You kick out the indoctrinaters, you kick out the professors [who] openly support Hamas and other U.S.-designated terror organizations. You kick out the students that blatantly support massacres of Jews and Israelis, and you make room for professors who want to teach and for students who want to learn."
Neither Barnard College nor Columbia University immediately responded to Fox News Digital's requests for comment.
Barnard College and Columbia University have a storied history. Initially, Columbia was an all-male university and Barnard, an all-female school, became part of the Columbia system in 1900. The two still share academic resources and both institutions have classes that are available to Columbia and Barnard students.
On Feb. 26, Columbia tweeted out a statement saying that "the disruption of academic activities is not acceptable conduct."
Immediately following the class disruption in January, interim President Armstrong condemned the incident in a statement, saying that the agitators' actions went against the university's rules. Additionally, Columbia suspended an alleged participant with ties to the university and launched an investigation.
Barnard President Laura Ann Rosenbury published an op-ed on the situation on Monday in the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled, "When Student Protest Goes Too Far."
"This disruption was not designed to expand thinking or advance civil discourse. Instead, it was a calculated act of intimidation, with the disruptors taunting and loudly speaking over the professor, distributing antisemitic flyers, and refusing to join the discussion even when the professor graciously invited them to sit in on the class," Rosenbury writes. She went on to say the protesters actions were "utterly at odds with our mission."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
15 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Government can't hold Columbia activist Mahmoud Khalil, federal judge rules
The federal judge presiding over Mahmoud Khalil's case on Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration, for now, cannot deport or detain the Columbia University activist based on a determination by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The judge's preliminary injunction will not take effect until Friday, allowing the government time to appeal. He stayed the preliminary injunction until 9:30 a.m. Friday. "This is the news we've been waiting over three months for," Khalil's wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, said in a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union, which is among the legal teams involved in the case. Rubio has cited an obscure provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 to justify Khalil's removal from the U.S., saying that he poses a national security risk. He had argued that the provision allows the secretary of state to 'personally determine' whether Khalil should remain in the country. U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz determined that Khalil could not be removed or detained based on Rubio's determination. Khalil was a Columbia University student who played an active role in protests over the war in Gaza on the Manhattan campus last year. He was arrested by federal agents in March and has been held since, as he and his lawyers have challenged efforts to deport him. The Trump administration has accused him of leading 'activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.' A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security has alleged that Khalil has acted to 'glorify and support terrorists.' Khalil, who has not been charged with any crime, last week called the claims 'grotesque and false.' In his decision Wednesday, the judge said that Khalil's "career and reputation are being damaged and his speech is being chilled — and this adds up to irreparable harm." The Department of Homeland Security has also argued that it could detain Khalil because he inaccurately completed his lawful-permanent-resident application. But that would not work as an argument to keep Khalil detained, Farbiarz wrote. "The evidence is that lawful permanent residents are virtually never detained pending removal' for those types of omissions, he wrote. 'And that strongly suggests that it is the Secretary of State's determination that drives the Petitioner's ongoing detention — not the other charge against him,' Farbiarz wrote. The ACLU called the preliminary injunction "a huge win." Khalil's lawyers called for his immediate release, and said they would not stop fighting until he is home with his wife and child in the U.S. 'This vindicates what Mahmoud has maintained since day one — that the government cannot detain or deport him based on Rubio's say-so," Ramzi Kassem, co-founder for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said. Messages seeking comment from the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department were not immediately returned. Khalil was one of the first campus protesters targeted by the Trump administration, which has vowed to strike back over protests over the war in Gaza, which Israel launched after it was attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. Trump has targeted Columbia and Harvard, citing a fight to combat antisemitism at universities. The Trump administration last week claimed Columbia violated Jewish students' rights and threatened the Manhattan university's accreditation. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
15 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Protest curfews wallop downtown restaurants: 'Just stay open, make money where we can.'
The Mermaid hasn't turned a profit since Saturday. The aquatic-themed Little Tokyo bar is typically open daily and a hub for regulars, community events and off-duty workers of the hospitality industry, all bathed in soft blue lighting meant to replicate the ocean's waves. But these fixtures hadn't been found there for days, because the Mermaid — like many restaurants and bars spread through downtown's hot zones for anti-ICE protests and an 8 p.m. curfew — is closing, pivoting to other business models and trying new hours of operation to weather fallout from ongoing unrest spurred by widespread immigration raids. 'It's devastating,' said co-owner Arlene Roldan. 'It's ultimately going to impact us dramatically. With all the work that we've already put into this, it's like a whole new bar at this point, and a whole new marketing strategy that we're going to have to come up with.' Little Tokyo, she said, is often the epicenter of community activism and marches. After seeing how many protesters were gathering downtown on Sunday, she and her business partner, Katie Kildow, decided not to open that evening. Read more: Federal prosecutors 'coming after' L.A. protesters. Do some charges encroach on 1st Amendment? They tried to reopen their bar on Monday but only made it an hour before the protests pushed almost to their door, which is located three blocks from the Metropolitan Detention Center. LAPD then closed nearby streets, and no one could access the cocktail bar. On Tuesday night Roldan heard a rumor that Mayor Karen Bass could issue a curfew, and told her staff to stay home until further notice. About an hour later, the order came. The Mermaid remained closed. On Wednesday, the team tried something different: Reopen at noon, and close at 7 p.m. in accordance with the curfew. Now they're trying to reach an entirely new demographic of those able to stop by for a drink during the daytime, while also communicating to regulars that the bar will only be open through 7 p.m. until the curfew lifts. Roldan said that as an owner-operator, she feels fortunate to be in a position to make business decisions that can help staff and keep the doors open, even if it means taking on bartending shifts herself. It's been consolation during a trying week. 'Little Tokyo was definitely hit very hard on Monday with opportunists that were looting,' Roldan said. 'Some of this graffiti is a little daunting, and here people today are now boarding up their businesses. So it's just becoming a little bit more and more bleak each day.' Read more: 330 immigrants detained in Southern California since Friday, White House spokesperson says Roldan is still standing with the protests, personally participating in marches during the day and offering drinks to customers who might need an escape from the disarray beyond the Mermaid's doors. 'It seems like we're always part of the path [of protests], so we're offering water and a place for people to recharge and to revive,' she said. 'We're also offering a welcome drink to anyone who just needs to calm their nerves as well, because it is a very intense environment out here.' Sampa, a nearby restaurant in the Arts District, is also toying with new daytime hours to offset business losses from the evening curfew. Since Friday, its owners saw reservations canceled first in a trickle, then by roughly 20%. On Sunday, the modern Filipino restaurant lost at least 50% of its business, with reservations canceled. Brunch walk-ins slowed to a halt. 'I think most of our diners travel to us and they get spooked,' said co-owner Jenny Valles. 'They get really scared like, 'Well, I don't know if I'm going to get caught up in the protests or the street closures, so we're just going to stay away.' While 99% of L.A. is doing fine and living their lives, people don't realize that 1% is greatly affected by this. We are one square mile where the curfew is, and it's really difficult.' On Tuesday evening when Valles and her business partners — husband Peter Rosenberg and chef Josh Espinosa — learned of downtown's 8 p.m. curfew, they canceled most of the night's reservations and closed early to allow staff to return home safely. Now they're pivoting their business hours, hoping that running the weekend brunch menu on weekdays and starting dinner at 3 p.m. can help them sustain. 'We're a small business, we can't afford to close,' Valles said. 'Our strategy is just: stay open, make money where we can, make sure we keep our lights on, make sure we keep our staff on.' Espinosa estimates that the restaurant makes 80% of its revenue between the hours of 6 and 10 p.m.; with a multi-day curfew in place, they're concerned that they cannot afford to close for even one hour between brunch and dinner service. 'We're dealt cards and it's on us to make the most of it and make the best of it,' Espinosa said. Valles said that restaurateurs she knows also carry 'emotional stress' concerning the well-being of immigrant staff. 'It's really emotionally difficult,' she said. 'They are the ones that wash the dishes, they are the ones that cook, they are the ones that put food on our plates across L.A.' Nearer to City Hall, Indian mainstay Badmaash closed due to street closures, the curfew and fallout from protests. 'We're taking it day by day,' co-owner Nakul Mahendro said in an email. 'Our main concern is the safety and well being of our staff.' 'No one wants to come downtown,' he added. 'We don't have any reservations…The business impact is tough, especially after all we've been through, but we're encouraging guests to visit our Fairfax location instead.' Camélia, one of the L.A. Times' 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles, is closed tonight. It barely began its dinner service on Tuesday before receiving word of the curfew, whose square-mile zone also included the French-Japanese bistro's corner of the Arts District. 'It was a huge scramble and very stressful for the staff to try to figure out what to do in the moment,' said co-owner Courney Kaplan. 'We decided today, let's just take a day, regroup and get a sense of what our next steps are going to be.' Via a large group text between the restaurant's owners, chefs and managers, the team solidified their game plan. They will pivot to a new lunch service and happy hour while under curfew, operating from 12:30 to 6:30 p.m. and offering a streamlined menu of some of their most popular items: a croque Madame, the dry-aged burger, salads and beyond, with nightly happy hour specials that could include oysters and sparkling drinks. Read more: An Arts District hub redefines the bistro for Los Angeles They toyed with the idea of selling bottled cocktails or flipping part of the space to a wine shop. To Kaplan and her business partner, chef-owner Charles Namba — who also own and operate Echo Park restaurants Tsubaki and Ototo — these pivots are all too familiar. 'I'm having kind of intense flashbacks to March 2020, where we just need to try it and be flexible,' Kaplan said, 'and if we need to then pivot to something else, making sure that we're able to do that as well.' Kaplan and Namba began to see business drop off at Camélia as soon as the protests began, with guests canceling reservations and calling with questions about how to access the restaurant with road closures. Over the weekend, Kaplan estimates that Camélia lost roughly 40% of its revenue. As the week began the figure jumped to as much as 60%. Read more: The shocking state of the restaurant industry: 'We can't afford to be open. We can't afford to be closed.' After facing years of financial and operational setbacks marked by slow pandemic recovery, the city's economic fallout from entertainment-industry strikes, inflation and increases to minimum wage, the restaurant industry is seeing an onslaught of closures. In early 2025, the Altadena and Palisades fires wrought more fiscal trouble to restaurants throughout the city. 'The amount of stress that's brought on all of our coworkers and everybody on the team is almost unprecedented,' Kaplan said, adding, '[The industry] has just taken such a beating over the past few years that I really do hope people will come back and support small businesses,' she said. 'I'm just hoping for the best for our city and our community right now.' Sign up for our Tasting Notes newsletter for restaurant reviews, Los Angeles food-related news and more. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
18 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Government must release Columbia protester Mahmoud Khalil, but has until Friday to appeal, judge says
NEWARK, N.J. — A federal judge has ruled that the government must release Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University graduate student whom the Trump administration is trying to deport over his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. But Khalil, a legal U.S. resident, will remain in custody until at least Friday, giving the government time to appeal, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said Wednesday. 'The court's decision is the most significant vindication yet of Mahmoud's rights,' said Ramzi Kassem, co-director of CLEAR, a legal nonprofit and clinic at the City University of New York that represents Khalil. 'But we aren't out of the woods until Mahmoud is free and back home with his wife and child.' Lawyers and spokespersons for the Justice Department, which is handling the case, didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Khalil was detained by federal immigration agents on March 8 in the lobby of his university-owned apartment, the first arrest under President Trump's crackdown on students who joined campus protests against the war in Gaza. He was then flown across the country and taken to an immigration detention center in Louisiana, thousands of miles from his attorneys and wife, a U.S. citizen who gave birth to their first child while he was in custody. Khalil's lawyers challenged the legality of his detention, accusing the Trump administration of trying to suppress free speech. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he has the power to deport Khalil because his presence in the U.S. could harm foreign policy. Farbiarz had ruled earlier that expelling Khalil from the U.S. on those grounds was likely unconstitutional. In his new ruling Wednesday, the judge said that Khalil had shown that his continued detention is causing irreparable harm to his career, his family and his free speech rights. However, the judge put his order on hold until 9:30 a.m. Friday to allow the government time to appeal. In his ruling, Farbiarz cited Khalil's statement to the court last week that the revocation of his green card has damaged his career prospects, including a decision by Oxfam International to rescind a job offer to serve as a policy adviser. The judge also noted that the decision deterred Khalil from engaging in constitutionally protected protests and free speech-related activities. 'The Court finds as a matter of fact that the Petitioner's career and reputation are being damaged and his speech is being chilled — and this adds up to irreparable harm,' the judge wrote. Farbiarz noted in his ruling that the government has also argued it is detaining and deporting Khalil in part because of alleged omissions on his green card application. But the judge said evidence presented by his attorneys showed lawful permanent residents are virtually never detained for such a thing. Khalil, in his statement to the court last week, also disputed that he wasn't forthcoming on the application. For example, he said he was never employed by or served as an 'officer' of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, as the administration claims, but completed an internship approved by the university as part of his graduate studies. The judge's decision comes after several other legal residents targeted for their activism have been released from custody, including another Palestinian student at Columbia, Mohsen Mahdawi; a Tufts University student, Rumeysa Ozturk; and a Georgetown University scholar, Badar Khan Suri. Rubio has cited a rarely used statute to justify the deportation of Khalil and others, which gives him power to deport those who pose 'potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.' Khalil isn't accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. The government, however, has said that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country for expressing views that the administration considers to be antisemitic and 'pro-Hamas,' referring to the Palestinian militant group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Khalil, then an international affairs graduate student, had served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists at Columbia who took over a campus lawn last spring to protest Israel's military campaign in Gaza. The university brought police in to dismantle the encampment after a small group of protesters seized an administration building. Khalil is not accused of participating in the building occupation and wasn't among the people arrested in connection with the demonstrations. But images of his maskless face at protests, along with his willingness to share his name with reporters, made him an object of scorn among those who saw the protesters and their demands as antisemitic. The White House accused Khalil of 'siding with terrorists,' but has yet to give any evidence for the claim. Offenhartz and Marcelo write for the Associated Press.
