Shai Davidai is a professor at Columbia Business School. Three weeks ago he filmed a viral video in which he told Jewish parents that their children aren’t safe at elite universities.
“We cannot protect your children from terrorist student organizations!” he yelled. “Because the president of Columbia University will not speak out against pro-terrorist students! Because the president of Harvard, the president of Stanford, they will not speak out against terrorist student organizations!”
According to his website, his main work is about “people's everyday judgments of themselves, other people, and society as a whole.” Maybe he needs a different academic focus. Because this is so far from reality he may as well be describing a bad acid trip. One of the groups he was talking about literally has “Jewish” and '‘Peace” in its name. Nevertheless last week, to the horror of those of us who thought New York City isn’t Florida, Jewish Voices for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine were disbanded amidst pressure from activists like Davidai.
Now, he’s demanded that students and faculty call the NYPD if they see members protesting “illegally.” So … what does that entail? If former members go out in public in groups of three with a Palestinian flag you’re supposed to call one of the most abusive, racist police departments in America? Kids are scrappy, so I guess, and hope, they’ll keep going. But foreign students on visas can’t afford to get arrested.
I recently wrote about how we’re policing speech with the literal police. The President of Queens college sent out a letter last week assuring students and faculty that an organization on campus is being investigated for an Instagram post. The post in offensive, in that it questions some of the widely accepted events of October 7th.
He added, “We have contacted and will continue to cooperate with the NYPD regarding these incidents.” The point about free speech is that it can be offensive, and it still shouldn’t be policed by the literal police.
Andrew Cuomo, the world’s most irrelevant man, wants to go a step beyond and suggests deploying the National Guard to New York to “fight anti-Semitism.”
“It’s time to deploy the National Guard to Jewish centers and places of worship and send a clear message: Hate has no place in New York and anyone who trafficks in it will be held responsible to the fullest extent of the law,” he said in a press release. “We need to speak with one voice and say ‘We are with you. You target a Jew, you target me too,'” he said.
Nothing bad has ever happened when the National Guard mixes with young student protesters, right? So a flawless idea.
And Elizabeth Warren, busy destroying her legacy by refusing to demand a ceasefire, came out with a statement that know she was like, “This will make everyone happy!”
“The sharp rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia is dangerous,” she wrote. “One step Congress can take now: fund security to protect mosques and synagogues from violence. I stand with people who want to worship in safety.”
As Adam Johnson observed, “American liberalism is great because desperate cries by Muslims and Arabs for a ceasefire go through the PR sausage machine and somehow come out the other end as “more money for cops.”
“No matter what the crisis of legitimacy is for the Democratic Party the answer is somehow, always, more money for the pentagon and cops,” he added.
There are many reasons for this, but the main driver is fear. Going back to the Columbia professor, when you stir up irrational fears, people get killed. By police; by vigilantes. The Democratic city apparatus has always conflated homelessness with danger, but Eric Adams upped the ante. What happened? Jordan Neeley was choked to death on the train. In this environment, designating a group “pro-terrorist” is yelling fire in a crowded theater but also setting it on fire after locking the doors (I am fond of my metaphor, yes, but as a caveat I’m not saying the professor’s speech should be suppressed by the NYPD either!)
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Well said and, Adam Johnson's sausage machine quote about American liberals is absolutely correct.
I refuse to accept the idea that you actually believe what you write.
Israel will never agree nor should they agree to a ceasefire before all hostages are released and Hamas unconditionally surrenders.
Based on your logic the US should have sought a ceasefire after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.