Professor Shai Davidai, an Israel-born Columbia University professor, who was blocked from entering the university campus on Monday, wrote a post addressing Columbia COO Cas Holloway. On Monday, Holloway stood alongside campus security at the entrance of the campus, which has been taken over by anti-Israel and antisemitic protesters, to ensure that the professor would not enter.
"Cas, you're really great guy. I know it. I saw it in your eyes today. This is why I know that, deep down, you know I'm right. You may not like my style, but I know you agree with almost everything that I have been saying. I just know it," Davidai opened.
"I am still trying to understand how you could just stand there, look me in the eyes, and not let me into campus. How could you keep a straight face when you capitulated to the pro-Hamas mob yet refused entry to the most vocal voice for the Jewish and Israeli students, staff, and faculty at Columbia?" he asked.
"I think I know how.
"You were just doing your job.
"You were just doing your job when you denied a Jewish professor access to campus (by the way, all I wanted to do was to read the names of the 133 hostages, thanks for asking)."
He continued: "You were just doing your job when you sided with those that support Hamas.
"You were just doing your job when you couldn't say for a full minute whether Hamas is a terrorist organization. (remember that meeting? It's all recorded. You were just doing your job)."
The professor stated: "Look, I get it. You're scared. You are worried about how the pro-Hamas extremists (and the brainwashed cult they've amassed) will react if you try to disperse them.
"But that's exactly how terrorism works. It's an ideology that forces you to act in certain ways through explicit and implicit threats. Hamas doesn't need to bomb all the buses in Israel for me to still be scared of riding a bus in Tel Aviv."
According to Davidai, "It's the same at Columbia. At this point, the pro-Hamas mob at Columbia has broken basically every possible rule of the university (and possibly multiple State and Federal laws). The NYPD has stated that they are ready to act if President Shafik lets them in. And you're the person who needs to make that call. That is damn scary.
"But being scared is not an excuse for not doing the right thing. Being scared is not an excuse for choosing the pro-Hamas mob and their violent chants over the Jewish professor who believes in co-existence."
He noted that "the problem is that you are not alone. There are thousands of administrators like you all over US campuses who are also scared. Like you, they want to stay out of it. Like you, they are just doing their jobs."
Davidai brought up history, writing: "And there were millions of Germans like you in the 1930s, good Germans, upstanding Germans, who were just doing their jobs.
"Who do you think ran the universities of Berlin and Munich and Heidelberg and Frankfurt in the 1930s? Who helped the Hitler Youth check out books by Jewish authors to burn outside of campus? Administrators. Just like you."
"Cas, what I am trying to say is learn from history. Now is not the time to just "do your job". The entire nation is looking at you. You have the opportunity to show your kids, show your family, that when the time came, you stood up for what's right," he concluded and called on him to take several steps:
"1. Disperse the illegal encampment
2. Expel the radical extremists who are brainwashing this pro-Hamas mob (and start enforcing the suspension of those leaders who are miraculously back on campus)
3. Dismantle all of the student organizations in CUAD (the coalition behind all the antisemitism and calls for terrorism on campus) and suspend all their leaders.
4. Deal with your pro-Hamas faculty. Do something about them. Seriously.
5. Restore my right to be Jewish in public wherever I want to be."