https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/03/opin...ish-threats-columbia-hamas-davidai/index.html
Opinion: I’m a Jewish Columbia professor. I wouldn’t allow my children to go here now
Opinion by Shai Davidai
November 3, 2023
Editor’s Note: Shai Davidai is an assistant professor of management at Columbia Business School. He received his PhD in social psychology from Cornell University and has previously taught at Princeton University and at The New School for Social Research. He is on X @ShaiDavidai. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
I’m a 40-year-old Columbia University professor and last month I found myself crying in front of dozens of strangers on campus.
I wasn’t planning on crying. The tears just came out when I spoke about the danger of antisemitism on US campuses in a video that has since gone viral. Judging from the thousands of supportive messages I’ve received, it seems that Jewish Americans around the country have been crying with me. It was a cry of despair — a howl, really — that took on the purest form of human pain. A cry that arose from the darkest, deepest and most primal of fears. A cry that has been consuming me for weeks, urging me to speak up.
Following the horrific massacre in Israel by Hamas terrorists on October 7, I felt an intense, relentless grief. Grief for the thousands of civilians shot, murdered, mutilated, raped and beheaded. Grief for the intentional killing of babies, some burned beyond recognition. Grief for the confused children dragged at gun point by violent men into captivity in Gaza.
Yet there was a deeper, darker grief. A grief that seeped from a wound I’d thought was healed. A grief that comes from the trauma hiding at the bottom of every Jewish person’s heart. A grief that comes from seeing, once again, Jewish people targeted in their homes and communities.
Soon, this darkest of griefs was joined by intense fear. I feared not only for the future of innocent Israeli and Palestinian children, but for the future of my family here, in New York City.