In the latest episode, I explain how the Los Angeles Review of Books killed an interview with author Shai Davidai because the editors believed lies and distortions about him in the media. The editors didn’t offer or request changes; they just decided to blacklist Shai altogether.
Writer Melissa Uchiyama, who wrote the piece for the prestigious journal, joined me to divulge what happened. Listen through the link above, or wherever you get podcasts. Read that interview here:
Rather than letting Melissa’s interview with Shai die on the proverbial vine, I offered to publish it, lightly edited with her approval.
I’m publishing it with no paywall. Please consider supporting They Stand Corrected, and get unlimited access to all posts.
Interview with Shai Davidai, ‘Radical Moderate’
By Melissa Uchiyama
“A mere five days since the October 7 Massacre, the place looked nothing like itself… Silently facing their classmates [who] celebrated the worst massacre of Jews in more than eighty years, they cried, hugged one another, and whispered words of comfort. Visibly distraught, they struggled to process the sheer magnitude of the massacre while forced to simultaneously confront a new battlefront right in their own backyard. With each passing second, their silence became almost audibly heavy.”
That was the scene. Two lawns, two very different experiences. Enter mohawk, tattoos, black T-shirt, jeans and boots: Shai Davidai’s edge does not exactly hint at moderation. It was this (now former) Columbia Business School professor whose voice cut through the drumming and haze of a university as he called out the rhetoric of Hamas on campus. While Jewish students and professors were threatened and bullied out of segregated campus spaces, and professors held classes in the non-Jewish, non-Zionist encampment on the quad, Davidai turned on his live feed and spoke.
In the new book American Intellectual Antisemitism: The Anti-Jewish Movement Tearing Through Our Universities, he explains what transpired. Originally begun as a letter to his son, it reads as partial memoir, partial history class, and a plea for critical thought.
American Intellectual Antisemitism shares how universities like Columbia allowed extremist ideas to take root and move from intellectual study to standard thinking, and then, violent action. He shares how a radical ideology planted into the curriculum seeped into the student body’s collective brain, normalized discourse, the media, publishing, and the streets.
This is how an anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah atmosphere not only took hold at Columbia, but swept through Ivy League and other universities. It shows up in syllabi, posts by professors expressing jubilation at the violence towards Jews and Israelis on Oct. 7th, and in clubs and activities.
I spoke with Davidai, an Israeli-American, about his writing style, editorial choices, and why he thinks long-form materials are so important in this era.
Shai: I hope it comes off as a concise and flowing narrative, because I take pride in writing as an art. I don’t want people to think this is just a textbook about antisemitism. It’s not. It started off as completely a memoir because it was a letter to my son. Slowly, some of the memoir-ish pieces came out. Now, it’s an amalgam of memoir and exposé, which is like my personality. I can talk about very serious stuff with a lot of knowledge, but on eye-level. I hope I’m not lecturing anyone; that’s not my goal.
Also, this isn’t just about Jews or Israel. It’s about anti-Americanism and opposition to Western liberal values. I think we all benefit from those values, and we need to be vigilant when they are being contested.
Melissa: Why do you call yourself a radical moderate?
Shai: When people see me without engaging with me, they often try to put me in a bucket, and ask, “Where does this person fit in?” You know, “He’s got tattoos, a Mohawk sometimes. He raises his voice, and sometimes he curses too much. He’s a radical.” But if people read what I write or just listen to what I say, they’ll say, “Oh, that’s a very moderate stance.”
The problem is that people think that you’re either a radical or a moderate, two different things altogether. You have your attitudes, your beliefs, and then you have your methods. My beliefs and values are very, very moderate. But I sometimes engage in more radical methods of getting them out there. We tend to assume that if you’re non-violent, that means you have to be silent. If you’re peaceful, that means you don’t stir things up. But sometimes in order to maintain the peace, you’ve got to stir things up. In order to be non-violent, you have to raise your voice to point at the violence -- especially the violence that pretends that it’s not.
Melissa: How do you regulate and test your moderation, especially when emotions run high?
Shai: I keep testing myself to see how moderate I am. If I feel like I’m moving a bit towards the right, I expose myself to the left talking points. When I feel myself veering too much to the left, I expose myself to the right talking points. As long as I’m angering both extremes equally, I know that I’m in a right position.
It was a moment on October 12th, 2023, at Columbia’s first protest, where I saw hate and what it can lead to. I vowed that I am never, ever going to hate. That forces you to be moderate, because hatred is anger.
Melissa: In a book focused on anti-Jewish extremism, what was your rationale in not omitting extremist acts committed by Jews or Israelis?
Shai: I knew that if I’m going to write about extremism or hate, it’s not going to be about just one side. It was important for me to have that in there. A lot has been said and written about me, most of it without engaging with what I’ve actually said and written. I tell people, “I don’t need you to love me. I don’t need you to have any judgment of me. But if you do, I’d rather you first engage with what I write and what I say.”
I’m sure I’m going to have my critics. Who doesn’t have critics? In addition, the last 80 pages are just references because I want to give people the opportunity first to fact-check me. Part of critical thinking is being critical about the person saying you should be critical, and also to delve deeper. Even in a 300-page book, you can do only so much. I don’t want people to treat this or any other book as gospel. I do want them to engage more deeply with the issues.
I don’t want this to come out as this is the professor that knows everything. I researched a great deal, and was shocked. There’s so much information, misinformation and disinformation, and our lives are busy. I put on the hat of a professor, reading everything and then summarizing, so people can learn from it.
Melissa: What was the aim in supplying the whole text of that first live, viral video?
Shai: I wanted people to see that my fight was never against the students. From the very beginning, it’s about this idea. Unfortunately, I was correct that ideas don’t stay contained, especially extremist ideas whether they are anti-Israel, anti-Palestinian, anti-Western, or even anti-Asian. They end up getting a life of their own and inspire real violence and aggression.
Melissa: You call Columbia a lab of terror apology. That is a strong indictment on an esteemed institute of learning.
Shai: One of the things academics tend to claim is, “We’re not taking a position. We’re just asking questions, just examining this.” Obviously, when you only examine something from one direction, you’re inherently taking a position and making a statement. When it comes to what I name “a laboratory for terror apology,” it didn’t start off with flags of Hamas. It started off very, very subtle. Each brick or step in the experiment was asking, “Will the world accept this? How does the world think about this?”
I don’t believe someone wakes up one day and says, “I hate Jews or Israelis, and I’m gonna support terrorism.” You slowly get to that point by first building a worldview based on basic ideas. It’s easy to dismiss social media or universities or an op-ed in a mainstream newspaper. But when you realize the underlying thought processes, ideologies, and ideas, you see the problem.
Melissa: Why do you tout long-form materials?
Shai: Whether podcasts, films, or books, long-form forces you to engage. When it’s something short and snappy, only bullet points and talking points, you might internalize what you’re told, but you’re not really engaging or asking, “What do I think about this?” I’ve noticed when my wife Yardenne and I listen to long-form podcasts, a lot of times we stop, have a little conversation, then continue.
It also forces us to slow down. Part of being a radical moderate, and definitely part of critical thinking, is slowing down and realizing, “I don’t have to have an opinion about everything.” When I do have an opinion, however, I need to make sure that it’s a founded opinion – that I’ve really thought about it. What happens now is the complete opposite.
Melissa: You became a public figure through a piece of media that exploded, so to speak. What’s lost when everything we consume or create becomes short and immediate?
Shai: A lot of stuff that I put out is short and snappy, because you also need to get people’s attention. But that creates people who have strong opinions without a lot of thinking behind them. You know how when you watch a movie from the ‘60s and ‘70s, it can feel painful? It’s not because the movie has changed, but because we’ve lost that muscle. We must engage that muscle to keep using it.