Shai Davidai: Columbia University temporarily bans pro-Israel professor after October 7 protest

(CNN) – Columbia University has temporarily banned pro-Israel professor Shai Davidai He was fired from campus for “repeated harassment and intimidation” of school employees, according to a university spokesperson.

“Because Assistant Professor Davidai has repeatedly harassed and intimidated university staff in violation of university policies, we have temporarily restricted his access to campus while he conducts appropriate training on our staff conduct policies,” a university spokesperson said in a statement CNN.

The university said the ban on Davidai, who has been an assistant professor at the university's business school since 2019, was related to his behavior last week at an Oct. 7 memorial service.

The spokesperson also said the school respects Davidai's right to freedom of expression. “His freedom of expression has not been and will not be restricted now. However, Columbia does not tolerate threats of intimidation, harassment or other threatening behavior by its employees,” the spokesperson added.

The Ivy League school in New York was the epicenter of pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. college campuses this spring. In August, university president Minouche Shafik resigned after coming under fire for authorizing arrests on campus and for her testimony before the House Education Committee about the university's handling of anti-Semitism.

Davidai's temporary ban came about a week after he attended an Oct. 7 memorial service on campus, during which he posted videos online of himself confronting a university official.

Davidai told CNN he encourages people to watch the videos and judge for themselves whether they think it is harassment.

He objected to the school's actions. “The only professor who was suspended is the Jewish-Israeli professor who called for support of terrorism on campus,” Davidai said.

Although Davidai is not teaching a course this semester, he cannot go to his office, attend faculty meetings or research seminars and is “basically excluded from university life,” he said.

On October 7, Jewish students at Columbia University gathered for an organized memorial service to mark the one-year anniversary of the massacre in Israel.

The October 7, 2023 attacks killed more than 1,200 Israelis – the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust – and Hamas continues to hold many people hostage.

According to the Gaza Strip Health Ministry, Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza has cost 40,000 lives. The brutal war in Gaza and the enormous number of civilian deaths have sparked widespread outrage even among Israel's allies.

Davidai told CNN on Wednesday that students and faculty who support Hamas protested the memorial service last week.

Davidai described what he saw on the day of the memorial, saying that students had protested the event with signs containing phrases supporting Hamas and the armed resistance.

“It’s terrible and unbelievable,” Davidai said. “Imagine protesting the Tulsa Massacre Memorial. This is what it felt like for Jews when there was a protest on October 7th.”

However, Davidai acknowledged that the protest was about “free speech, no matter how painful it is.”

At the one-year anniversary gathering, Davidai began recording videos of university employees pressing them on why pro-Palestinian protests were allowed on campus on October 7.

He posted the video on his X Account, which has more than 100,000 users, confronts Cas Holloway, the university's chief operating officer.

“How could you let this happen on October 7th?” Davidai asked Holloway in the video. “You have to do your job. And I won’t let you rest if you don’t let us rest,” he told the university official in the video.

A university official told CNN that the access restriction was a direct result of Davidai's behavior on October 7, in which he harassed university employees in violation of university policy. This is not about a single incident or a single employee, said the university employee.

The university official also said Davidai was not suspended from his university position and that this action did not affect his status as a faculty member.

There were suspensions at school and the resignation of the president

The school continues to grapple with changes following protests earlier this year.

Safik announced her resignation a week after the resignations of three Columbia University deans, who were permanently removed from their positions earlier this summer after the university's president said they had engaged in “very disturbing” text messages that contained “anti-Semitic tropes touched”.

The school also banned a student, Khymani James, a pro-Palestinian student activist who said in a video, “Zionists don't deserve to live.”

Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which helped launch the protest camps at Columbia University that sparked a pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel movement on campuses across America, apologized on its behalf in April.

James has sued the university to get his ban overturned.

Earlier this month, the group withdrew its apology in which the group had claimed that James misspoke in the heat of the moment. But James recently wrote on X that he didn’t write the apology and said, “I won’t let anyone shame me for my politics.” Whatever I said, I meant it.”

CNN's David Goldman, Matt Egan and Elisabeth Buchwald contributed to this report.