15 Sept 2026
How Antisemitism Took Hold on Campus w/ Shai Davidai
Shai Davidai is a social psychologist at Columbia University and the author of American Intellectual Antisemitism: The Anti-Jewish Movement Tearing Through Our Universities. In this conversation, we examine how antisemitism became embedded in parts of university culture, why October 7 exposed the limits of Jewish inclusion in progressive spaces, and how the language of social justice can sometimes be used to excuse prejudice rather than confront it.
Davidai explains how academic frameworks built around oppression, identity, and power can become self-reinforcing, making it harder to recognize antisemitism when Jews are cast as privileged or powerful. We discuss the difference between antisemitic beliefs and behavior that becomes antisemitic in practice, why some academic environments begin with ideological conclusions and work backward toward evidence, and how institutions committed to justice can become blind to cruelty occurring in front of them.
He also describes the personal transformation that followed October 7—from believing he was fully accepted as an individual Jew to recognizing what he calls an “asterisk” attached to that acceptance. Davidai explains how his book began as a letter to his son and became a broader warning about higher education, intellectual conformity, and the erosion of truth and civility.
We also discuss campus activism, the “oppressor versus oppressed” framework, Jewish identity, free inquiry, Western liberal values, and why Davidai believes the struggle over antisemitism is not only a Jewish issue. At stake, he argues, is whether universities and democratic societies can still distinguish evidence from ideology, moral clarity from political fashion, and education from indoctrination.
This conversation goes beyond campus politics. It is about what happens when institutions stop rewarding truth, why Jewish identity must be grounded in confidence rather than fear, and what the fight against antisemitism reveals about the future of universities and the West.
Subscribe to Echoes of Jewish History for conversations about Jewish history, Israel, antisemitism, identity, and the ideas shaping our world.
Learn more:
jimmybitton.com (http://jimmybitton.com/)
Support the mission:
buymeacoffee.com/echoesofjewishhistory (http://buymeacoffee.com/echoesofjewishhistory)
Media & partnerships:
echoesmedia@icloud.com (mailto:echoesmedia@icloud.com)
Lifetime Supporter:
mosaicsbymarc.com (http://mosaicsbymarc.com/)
Partner:
EnvisionSuccessLLC.com (http://envisionsuccessllc.com/)
POWERED BY ECHOES MEDIA
