Columbia professor slams university leadership as anti-Israel agitators wreak havoc at Barnard

Anti-Israel protests broke retired astatine Barnard College past week, and Columbia subordinate prof Shai Davidai is calling retired students and module members.

"These protests that we saw 2 days ago, the convulsive taking implicit of a hallway astatine Barnard, it’s 1 of the aforesaid protests that started connected Oct. 12, 2023," Davidai told Fox News Digital. "Hate doesn’t spell distant connected its own. Extremism doesn’t spell distant connected its own. If you don’t woody with it, it stays around."

The astir caller protests were successful effect to the expulsion of 2 students who allegedly barged into a Columbia University schoolroom successful January and threw flyers filled with hateful and antisemitic rhetoric. 

Anti-Israel protesters demonstrated astatine Barnard College successful February 2025. (Getty; X)

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The prof teaching the course, Avi Shilon, told the Times of Israel that helium invited the protesters to articulation the class, but they refused and continued shouting instead. 

Following the Barnard students’ expulsion, much than 50 anti-Israel agitators took implicit a gathering connected Barnard’s campus, echoing past year’s takeover of Hamilton Hall astatine Columbia University. 

When speaking to Fox News Digital, Davidai pointed retired that portion the protests were physically taking spot astatine Barnard, they were organized by a Columbia-sanctioned and funded organization.

"This is the effect of 20 years of indoctrination," Davidai told Fox News Digital. "We person indoctrinated students and they are not the problem. The occupation has ever been the professors who person been indoctrinating them."

However, Davidai says helium has heard from Jewish and non-Jewish students alike that they are fed up with the protests.

"They spot nary accountability, and they’re conscionable sick of it," Davidai said. "I got emails from parents saying, ‘What are we paying $90,000 for? So, past Barnard tin spell and cleanable up the messiness of the students who got to locomotion scot-free?’ It doesn’t marque immoderate sense."

Anti-Israel pupil protesters show extracurricular Barnard College successful New York connected Feb. 27, 2025. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)

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Davidai says helium has tried to prosecute with different module connected the issues, but that successful 1 case, a pupil intervened and pulled the different module subordinate retired of the conversation. He says determination are "radical students" who are telling module "what to bash and what to say."

In summation to the faculty, Davidai sees a occupation with Columbia’s leadership. He says that erstwhile Columbia University President Minouche Shafik "did not cognize what she was going into" and "was a coward." He places heavier blasted connected Interim President Katrina Armstrong, who helium says is "incompetent."

Davidai does not deliberation each anticipation is mislaid for Columbia and believes determination is simply a mode for the assemblage to crook things around.

"You footwear retired the indoctrinaters, you footwear retired the professors [who] openly enactment Hamas and different U.S.-designated panic organizations. You footwear retired the students that blatantly enactment massacres of Jews and Israelis, and you marque country for professors who privation to thatch and for students who privation to learn."

An anti-Israel demonstrator holds a emblem connected the rooftop of Hamilton Hall astatine Columbia University successful New York connected April 30, 2024. (Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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Neither Barnard College nor Columbia University instantly responded to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.

Barnard College and Columbia University person a storied history. Initially, Columbia was an all-male assemblage and Barnard, an all-female school, became portion of the Columbia strategy successful 1900. The 2 inactive stock world resources and some institutions person classes that are disposable to Columbia and Barnard students.

On Feb. 26, Columbia tweeted retired a connection saying that "the disruption of world activities is not acceptable conduct."

Immediately pursuing the people disruption successful January, interim President Armstrong condemned the incidental successful a statement, saying that the agitators’ actions went against the university’s rules. Additionally, Columbia suspended an alleged subordinate with ties to the assemblage and launched an investigation.

Barnard President Laura Ann Rosenbury published an op-ed connected the concern connected Monday successful the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled, "When Student Protest Goes Too Far." 

"This disruption was not designed to grow reasoning oregon beforehand civilian discourse. Instead, it was a calculated enactment of intimidation, with the disruptors taunting and loudly speaking implicit the professor, distributing antisemitic flyers, and refusing to articulation the treatment adjacent erstwhile the prof graciously invited them to beryllium successful connected the class," Rosenbury writes. She went connected to accidental the protesters actions were "utterly astatine likelihood with our mission."