Yad Vashem chair: Is eliminating Israel a 'legitimate cause' at Columbia University?

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The chairman of the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Dani Dayan, wrote a letter to Columbia University President Minouche Shafik on Friday, urging her to assert her leadership and take a moral stance against the genocidal chants directed at Israel and the Jewish people by students, faculty, and others on the campus.

Dayan has a child who studied at Columbia and pointed out that there is a notable difference between being a leader of an institution and being an administrator.

“All the decisions you recently made were administrative in nature: to call the NYPD to evacuate the illegal encampment; to allow its re-establishment; to activate or deactivate credentials; to move to online teaching. Even your decision to negotiate is administrative in nature,” he wrote.

Dayan asserted that Shafik needs to make “leadership decisions” to lead both academically and morally.

“When thousands of Columbia faculty, staff and students call for the elimination of the State of Israel and the abolition of Zionism, you must take a stand,” Dayan wrote. “Not a political stand. A moral stand.”

In his letter, which Dayan also published on 𝕏, he invoked the teachings from the Talmud – the central text of Rabbinic Judaism – suggesting that silence implies consent.

“When it becomes crystal clear that abolishing the existence of the Jewish state is a prevalent ideology in Columbia, the president of the institution cannot remain silent. The Talmud teaches us: ‘Silence is admission’. Silence inevitably will be interpreted as tolerance or, even worse, consent.”

Dayan challenged Shafik to decide whether "the elimination of Israel – with or without the genocide of its Jewish population" should be considered a “legitimate cause advanced in academic syllabi, lectures, events, demonstrations and encampments in Columbia University.”

“Each day, each hour you evade making a public decision of this nature and acting accordingly, you actually decide affirmatively,” he added.

Dayan drew a parallel to Germany’s Heidelberg University, “no less prestigious than Columbia,” which had been “a center of liberal thinking” in the 1920s, but a decade later saw its students and faculty participate in antisemitic book burnings and the promotion of “race theory, eugenics and forced euthanasia.”

“Heidelberg did have administrators. Unfortunately, it lacked moral leadership,” Dayan wrote, adding that Shafik's decision would determine if Columbia would be “remembered as Heidelberg” for advocating the destruction and obliteration of the Jewish state.

Dayan quoted Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who said that indifference is “the most insidious danger of all” and American civil rights movement leader Martin Luther King Jr. who said: “The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.”

“A great moral conflict was delivered to your doorstep,” Dayan urged Shafik. “Rise to the occasion. Lead with moral principles, not only administrative regulations. Speak up.”

There have been repeated calls for the Columbia University president to resign from her position following the escalation of pro-Hamas demonstrations on campus. Most recently, Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson visited Columbia University and called on Shafik to resign.

“I’m here today joining my colleagues in calling on President Shafik to resign if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos,” Johnson said.