Firebrand Professor Leaves Columbia After Clashing Over Pro-Palestinian Protests

Shai Davidai, an embattled assistant professor and outspoken pro-Israel advocate who criticized Columbia and other U.S. universities for their response to pro-Palestinian protests, has left Columbia Business School.

A letter to faculty from CBS Dean Costis Maglaras said Davidai “has decided to depart” the school, according to a news article by Semafor.

Davidai told The Times Of Israel on Wednesday (July 9) that he plans to expand his advocacy work from New York City, where he lives. “I’ve been focusing my educational efforts in academia and I’ve decided being a professor is not the only way to educate people,” he told the newspaper.

‘I REFUSE TO CALL THEM PEACEFUL PROTESTS BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT PEACEFUL’

Davidai, who is Jewish, was born and raised in Israel and served in the Israeli Navy. He had been an assistant professor of management at Columbia Business School since 2019, after earning his Ph.D. in social and personality psychology at Cornell University. In 2023, he was named one of Poets&Quants’ Best 40-Under-40 MBA Professors.

Following the Hamas attacks on Israel civilians in October 2023, Davidai became a prominent critic of university administrators after widespread anti-Israel demonstrations erupted on campus

BOOM.

(Please help me spread this. @Columbia tried to smear my name. I wouldn’t let them. Today, they finally admitted that I hadn’t done anything wrong.) pic.twitter.com/P7Af6QrJXD

— Shai Davidai (@ShaiDavidai) July 9, 2025

He posted frequently on X about pro-Palestinian protests and events organized on Columbia’s campus that he said contain violent rhetoric. He’s also given several media interviews, including to P&Q last March.

“I’m not the kind of person who will wait for the rhetoric to turn into mass violence. I refuse to call them peaceful protests because they are not peaceful,” he told P&Q at the time. “I remember what it’s like seeing exploded busses after suicide bombings. That’s the intifada. That’s the kind of things we’re hearing.”

In February 2024, Columbia’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action launched a formal investigation into Davidai following allegations by graduate students.

The students claimed that he intentionally targeted marginalized students and misrepresented their peaceful protests. Davidai strongly denied the claims at the time. calling the investigation retaliatory.

“I realized that they are weaponizing this investigation to silence me,” he told Poets&Quants.

He vowed he would never leave Columbia unless he was cleared. On Tuesday (July 8), Columbia closed the investigation, “without issuing any findings or conclusions of wrongdoing,” according to a letter to Davidai from the vice provost for the Office of Institutional Equity.

“BOOM.” Davidai posted on X with a copy of the letter. “Please help me spread this. @Columbia tried to smear my name. I wouldn’t let them. Today, they finally admitted that I hadn’t done anything wrong.”

‘IT DEFINITELY WILL AFFECT GETTING TENURE’

Davidai’s criticism of Columbia and broader university practices continued even after the investigation began. He was twice barred from campus for allegedly organizing a sit-in and harassing university employees, according to the Columbia Spectator, the student newspaper. The Columbia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine called on the university to terminate Davidai.

Dear @SecRubio,

Thank you for your strong statements.

Now we want to see strong action.

Illegally taking over a college in which you are not even enrolled and distributing terrorist propaganda should be a deportable offense, no?

Because that’s what Mahmoud Khalil from… https://t.co/yAPBaHVB3M

— Shai Davidai (@ShaiDavidai) March 6, 2025

On March 6, 2025, Davidai addressed an X post to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, calling on him to deport Mahmoud Khalil, an international student attending Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and a pro-Palestianan organizer. Two days later, ICE arrested Khalil in his Columbia residential apartment building, according to the New York Times. Khalil spent several months in detention.

In March 2024, Davidai told P&Q that he believed his advocacy would “definitely affect my getting tenure,” which has now come true.

“A bigger issue that I hope will become a bigger conversation in our field is that business schools all around the country teach about leadership, they teach about ethical leadership. How many business professors have you seen stepping up and leading the fight?,” he said at the time.

“I can count them on one hand, and one finger, and that one finger is me.”

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