By Carl Zebrowski
Editor

The Lehigh Valley Jewish community showed its eagerness to kick off the new year of community-wide gatherings when they filled Temple Beth El on September 11 to hear what the Jewish former Columbia University professor who became the national face of standing up to college protests had to say about the current state of affairs on campuses.

The evening began with Shai Davidai, in his first public appearance since resigning from the Columbia faculty earlier this year due to incompatibility with the administration, joining the Jewish Federation’s major donors for dinner and conversation. For the first time, Women’s Philanthropy members who donate at the Lion of Judah and Pomegranate levels joined this special event under the leadership of Lauren Rabin.

When the event transitioned into its second phase, a community-wide presentation and Q&A with Davidai (as well as a dessert reception featuring a sprawling spread of baked sweets), Bill Markson, president of the Jewish Federation, welcomed the crowd. “It’s a wonderful feeling to be surrounded by so much generosity and so much interest in this topic,” he said. 

Israel Zighelboim, co-chair of the Federation’s 2026 Annual Campaign for Jewish Needs along with his wife, Valeska, and Eileen Ufberg, set the stage for Davidai. “Motivated by the inaction of his university’s administration,” he said, “he spoke out with passion and moral clarity.”

Davidai had planned for this anniversary of 9/11 to draw connections between the current situation that Jewish Americans have been forced to face and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on the NYC Twin Towers and elsewhere. Instead, it was impossible to ignore the murder a few days earlier of right-wing media personality Charlie Kirk during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University.

“Despite our many, many disagreements, what I saw in him was a young man, a father of two, who strongly believes in something, uses logic and reason to convey his message, and fights for his beliefs not with violence but in conversation,” Davidai said of the political commentator known for his young following. “His assassination proves the point he was trying to make all along: We have created a society where it’s dangerous to speak up for beliefs, where people try to shut you up or shoot you down, where everything we thought about colleges may be completely wrong.”

Davidai lamented that the views of today’s college students have become “very homogenous.” He went on to emphasize that the general views of faculty members were no better—and more dangerous. “It’s not the students,” he said. “It’s never been the students. It’s the professors. Students come and go. Professors remain.”

Davidai said Kirk had been working to change the dominant culture on campuses and elsewhere from one of “I disagree with you, so you have no valid reason to exist” to “The way to fight back against this is by speaking up and keeping the conversation alive.”

After Davidai finished the main portion of his presentation, he opened the evening up to the Q&A. One of the first and most pressing questions from the audience was, “Have universities reached rock bottom?”

“The answer is not going to be satisfactory,” Davidai replied. “The answer is, ‘It’s complicated.”

On the one hand, he told the crowd, there’s been progress on campus. “You see far fewer protests, far fewer participants, and you see more enforcement,” he said. “It took too long, but nonetheless…”

On the other hand, he continued, “If you listen to protesters, to what they’re saying, we’re actually in a worse place than we were. The ideology has become more and more radical, and that is the nature of radicalism,” he said. “They work on shock value. What do you do to keep the shock value at the same level? You have to get more and more extreme.”

Davidai left the audience with a positive note—at least a note that might be considered positive for a self-professed pessimist. He recalled one campus protest where a student protestor approached him amicably. “He was willing to have a conversation,” Davidai said. He remembered the student telling him, “I’m protesting the flag of Israel because of the concentration camps that Israel is putting Palestinians in.” 

“I realized he had no idea,” Davidai continued. “He was just ignorant.” Yet hope remained. “If someone is coming out of ignorance, then we can talk.” Respectful conversation, he said, offers the best hope for progress.

Jeri Zimmerman, executive director of the Jewish Federation, closed the night with a thank-you for the guest speaker. “I appreciate your clarity, your courage, and your conviction,” she told him. “You’re giving us all the inspiration to act boldly.”

One way everyone in the Lehigh Valley can act boldly in support of Israel and the local and global Jewish community is to donate to the Federation’s annual campaign. “Our strength lies in coming together to ensure a safer and more vibrant community,” Zimmerman said.

To make your donation, visit the Federation website at jewishlehighvalley.org/donate.