My Chat with Israeli Professor Shai Davidai - Facing the Mob for Speaking Up (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_644)
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Summary
Shai Davidei is an assistant professor at Columbia University's Business School. He has a PhD from Cornell and worked with his doctoral supervisor, Dr. Tom Gilovich, on a book on the psychology of regret, which is a topic that Shai and I discuss in this episode.
Transcript
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Hi, everybody. This is Gad Saad. Today, I have another wonderful guest. I wish we weren't
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talking under these current circumstances. I wish that we were talking about academic
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stuff. I have Professor Shai Davidei, who is an assistant professor at Columbia University's
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Business School. We have a lot in common in terms of academic background in that we both
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hail with our PhDs from Cornell. And actually, Shai's doctoral supervisor, Tom Gilovich,
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is actually one of my professors at Cornell. So, Shai, welcome to the show.
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Thank you for having me, Gad. And, you know, it's interesting because there's always this
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immediate kinship when you hear someone who crossed paths with Tom Gilovich. For me, it's like,
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Oh, Tom is unbelievable. You know, and actually in my, I guess you can't see it here, but in
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this book right here, my latest book on happiness, I have a whole chapter on the psychology of
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regret. And of course, as you probably know, or maybe some of our viewers don't, so let
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me just mention it. Tom was instrumental in studying the two sources of regret that loom
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over our heads, the regrets due to action, regrets due to inaction. And it turns out that over the
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long view, long-term view, the things that we didn't do, the inactions are usually the regrets
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that haunt us the most. So yes, Tom is a fantastic guy. Do you ever get a chance to go back to Cornell?
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I try to go twice a year. So Tom, our relationship has evolved from mentor-mentee to colleagues
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to just friends. You know, we're a generation apart, but we just enjoy each other's company.
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We did end up actually doing some research on regret ourselves, following up on his work
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in the 90s. And, you know, one of the things that I've always loved about Tom's
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way of looking into research and looking into life is that they are really, you know, indistinguishable,
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right? He studies real life things, and then you can take the things that he studies and apply them
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to real life. And for me, you know, the research on regrets of inaction, failures to act, and how
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that ends up haunting you for the rest of your life is, in many ways, informed a lot of the decisions
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in the past four months. You know, I know what I'm more or less likely to regret. I'll be more likely
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to regret not speaking up than speaking up and bearing the costs, even though it may be in the short
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run, you know, things are different. But in the long run, I know that the research has my back.
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What a, what a, I mean, beautiful way to set up what we're going to be talking about. You're exactly
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right. So I guess I first heard of you, when you put up this very sort of impassioned clip, maybe
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seven, eight minutes long, where you're standing in the public square, I think, on the Columbia
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University campus, and you're sort of talking about some of the difficulties that you're seeing on campus
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post October 7. Maybe we could start there and then drill down.
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Yeah. So, I mean, there's many different ways to tell the story, depending on where it starts.
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parsimonious way, right, would be to start with October 9, or October 8, when a couple student
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organizations here wrote up here at Columbia wrote a letter that basically not just justifies or excuses
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October 7 massacre in Israel by Hamas, but actually glorifies it, you know, calling this an historic day
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and, you know, things that we have been in the past four months have become desensitized to, but are really
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things that we shouldn't be desensitized to because these are horrific views, basically calling the
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targeting of civilians a success story. And then they, these organizations had a
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protest on campus, which was a very jarring moment for me, both as an Israeli and as a Jew,
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seeing the, the amount of hatred and vitriol that was expressed and the amount of support that was
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being chanted for Hamas, but also as an academic, seeing that this is happening at the, my university,
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at any university, right? This kind of rhetoric that you would not expect in any other,
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um, in any other context with any other group. Um, so a week later, some of my students at Columbia
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Business School, uh, organized an anti-terror vigil, basically standing there in support of
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the targets, the victims, uh, saying nothing about, you know, it's not saying anything about
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whether there should be a war, shouldn't be a war. It's all about just like terrorism is bad. Like
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that's not an, it's not a hot take. It's not a position where you can take a for or against,
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I thought. Um, and you know, people were standing there, lighting can, holding candles, uh, posters
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of the kidnapped. Some people were talking about their own experience, a woman who's been, um,
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in the forefront of volunteering with the families of the kidnapped, the hostages, uh, talked about her
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experiences. A student who was physically attacked while posting posters of the kidnapped, uh, was
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told about his experience. And then I kind of had to get some stuff off my chest.
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And so that was that, that clip was your first foray into publicly addressing the issue.
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Well, I was, before that, I, I, I was, uh, discussing it more and more on social media.
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I had very limited social media presence. Um, you know, before October 7th, I had my, my social media
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followers were in the hundreds and it was only academics talking about our research. Uh, now it's
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in the tens of thousands, um, because of that. So it was one of my first forays into speaking up
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and speaking out against what I see is, um, as a real moral bankruptcy.
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And I mean, your position and you'll, you'll fill in the details is really, I mean, you're about as
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soft spoken about this very contentious issue as a person can be right. You, you, you're not coming
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at this with fire and brimstone. You're like, Hey, Palestinians have the right to a dignified life.
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Jews have a right to a dignified life. Let's find peace. Let's agree that rape and terrorism is
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bad. I mean, it, it really is about as gentle an approach in sort of speaking out against the
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October 7th situation. Correct. Well, you know, I would like to believe it. It is, of course we can
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always, and should always strive to be more gentler. Right. You know, that's something that
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I think is an important thing. We should all try to humanize both sides and always strive to see,
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do I have my own, you know, blind spots and my own biases, you know, also as someone who studies these,
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I'm aware of this kind of thing. Uh, but yeah, you know, that's my position and it's my position out of
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pure authenticity. Like I've, I've always been a lefty, you know, if I've ever gotten in any
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arguments throughout my life, political arguments, it was because I was too left for people.
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I was too, some people would call me naive for supporting and still supporting a two state solution,
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uh, for speaking out against the occupation, uh, of when, when I say occupation, I mean the 1967
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armistice, uh, line, not the, what people are saying now that everything is an occupation,
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which of course is not, but, um, you know, I just, I really was just speaking out for myself.
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And this is another thing, uh, that's important to note. Like I never say, I've never argued that
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this, my view is the right view. My, you know, I've always argued that this is a view. I'm just a guy.
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I'm not speaking as in terms of an organization. I have never said anything about the war in Gaza,
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good or bad. I have never, you know, I've always empathized with civil loss of civilian lives on
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both sides because it's both sides are suffering. Um, but that doesn't mean that I won't have a strong
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stance against terrorism, support for terrorism and calls for the abolition of an entire state.
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And how, so let's, so there are three different groups at your university that we could talk about
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in terms of how they reacted to your public engagement. And then we could talk about the,
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the more general public. You said that your social media platform has grown, uh, quite a bit over the
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past few months. So we've got students at Columbia, we've got your colleagues at Columbia, and we've got
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administration at Columbia. What has been the response of each of these three groups, uh, to your
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positions? Um, I know that those are the, the, the natural fault lines for an academic to think
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about, but I actually don't think that those are the ones that I can make generalizations about.
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I actually think that there is, there are three different fault lines. There are the supporters,
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Jewish and non-Jewish students, faculty, and staff who've been amazingly supportive. Um,
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a lot of people are doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes. Um, a lot of people are, um, documenting
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things, writing letters, getting in touch with donors, right? So people think that I'm, I know
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I am speaking for myself, but people think that I'm the lone voice and it's like, I'm not the lone
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voice. There's actually hundreds and maybe thousands behind me just at Columbia. Um, then on the other
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side, you have the, I don't have a word that's better to describe it other than the terrorist
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sympathizers. Right. And when I say you want to make it softer, you could just say detractors maybe,
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but it's not just detractors because, and this is both students, faculty, and staff. And, um,
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you know, we had a faculty letter here, including some people from the business school who signed
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the letter calling the October 7th massacre a military action, right? We have had, um, student
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organizations having quote unquote teach-ins about how rape is, you know, a way of resistance.
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So, you know, for me, that's more than just a detractors, right? There's something deeply,
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uh, disturbing in that group. Um, and it's a small group, it's a small and very vocal,
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very powerful group, but small. Um, and then you have the middle, the, the, the vast majority
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who are just silent. Many students, I don't blame the students. They are here to study. They
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are here to get an education, not to get into, you know, shouting matches. Um, but many, most
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faculty as well that have not spoken up. And at first they, they never publicly spoke up about
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October 7th, which was a problem. Then they never spoke up against the fact that there are
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people that support October 7th here on campus, again, was disturbing for me. But the third,
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maybe more personal insult is that when they saw the personal attacks on me, they never spoke up.
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Even if they disagree with what I'm doing or agree with what I'm doing, but disagree with the style,
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which is fine. You don't have to agree. Um, the fact that no one spoke up and is still not speaking up
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about, you know, the silencing campaign of a fellow academic, um, that no one spoke up about the,
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the hatred and the antisemitism that I'm been a target of. And they're CC'd on the emails. Almost
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all of my colleagues step out my door. I see all of them. They're CC'd on the emails. I've been hurled.
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The worst insults a Jew can be hurled at. And no one spoke up. You know, that's, that's the scary
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thing for me as, as someone who's devoted the last 13 years to studying social psychology and,
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and how people behave in, in groups. Yeah. You know, uh, of course I fully empathize with what
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you're going through. And, uh, this is something that I've been, uh, experiencing for several decades as
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probably the most vociferous, uh, voice in academia speaking, not just about, I mean, frankly, uh,
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you know, speaking for, uh, a pro Jewish state or against some theological positions in the Middle
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East is, is hardly the only thing that I talk about. For example, all of the woke stuff, as you
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may know or not in this book, the parasitic mind is all about where do these woke parasitic ideas come
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from. And regrettably they all come from the university ecosystem. So I've been, uh, someone
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who's been at the, if I can say at the forefront of all that kind of hate. And actually I'll talk
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about something that just happened this past weekend, which, and then I could have easily
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cowered and said, let me not speak to shy because it's only going to add, uh, fire a fuel to the fire.
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So over the past weekend, I found out because some people send it to me that, uh, there are several
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websites that posted a clip definitively quote proving that I am a Mossad agent. The story comes
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in from, uh, uh, uh, something that I discussed in the happiness book in the chapter on the importance
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of play to happiness. And this is, this is something that happened in 1982. I'm 18 years old, where I
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discussed how there were some Israeli security people who came to, to ask me to do certain things.
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Uh, and I actually just posted today the excerpts from my book that, that are exactly speak to that
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story. That was taken as proof that I'm a Mossad agent. Now, what that does, of course, is it puts a
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huge target on you. Not, not only are you an outspoken guy who is Jewish, not only are you an outspoken
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guy who is Jewish, who's got family in Israel, not only are you a Jewish guy who's got family in Israel, but I
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am the Mossad agent who is orchestrating the entire puppeteering of the universe. So the amount of
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threats I got and so on is just bewildering. And the, the host who had started the clip has written
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to me and he's now put out a statement. He said, I feel like such an idiot that I set up the clip
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where he jokingly said, so, you know, professor, I didn't, you know, I didn't know you were a Mossad
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agent. And then I answered, I played along. They took that. And now on endless number of websites,
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the Zionist comes out as a fake Canadian, fake Lebanese. He's a Mossad agent and so on. Now I
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could have easily said, well, what would be a very good thing to do today is not to speak to Shai,
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because, you know, if anything, this is going to confirm that the two Mossad agents are speaking to
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each other. But then if we do that, if I keep quiet and you keep quiet and everybody keeps quiet,
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then slowly we, we are led to the abyss of infinite lunacy. So if nothing else, this long-winded
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story is to tell you, I feel your pain. Welcome to the infinite abyss of darkness.
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But, but I'll tell you, I mean, first of all, thank you. I, I, it's, it's weird when you'd say that
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because in the past four months, I have been also been blamed for being a Mossad agent, which is so
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funny because first of all, I'm such a wuss. I would never be able to pass the Mossad test.
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That's exactly what a Mossad agent, which would say, Shai.
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But the second, the second thing is, you know, the Mossad, like if I was a Mossad agent, why would
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I want, why would I have such a big audience? I'd be, but, but, but for putting that aside,
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so I've been blamed as a Mossad and my dad has been blamed as a Mossad. They're also going,
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and it's, the irony is, but this is not new. They did this to Dreyfus before there was a state of
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Israel. The, the Jew as, you know, the, the, the double loyalty Jew. Every time that someone writes
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about me, you know, I don't hide the fact that I'm Israeli. I'm Israeli. I'm, and I'm not a U.S.
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citizen. I'm, I'm a green card holder. Every time someone writes about me, they make a point of
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noting an Israeli foreigner in the U S right. Like they, they want to make that point, not realizing
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you're falling into the oldest antisemitic tropes that they, the, the Jews as this treason, double
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loyalty, uh, people, uh, I just see it as part of the problem. Um, but you mentioned something about
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like speaking up and speaking up event against the quote unquote, like the culture in universities.
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And, you know, again, the irony is that I have always been the perfect Jew or the perfect Israeli,
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right? I am the left leaning Israeli who opposes Netanyahu's government. I took a, I took a punch to
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the face from a, from an Israeli cop in a protest against Netanyahu's government. I, uh, am,
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you know, completely in line with people in almost all liberal people in almost all things, uh, from,
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uh, you know, LGBTQ issues, racial issues, immigration. Like I am the perfect Israeli,
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but for them, the fact that I'm Israeli, but as a non-apologetic Israeli is already means that I,
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I can't be perfect. Right. But that's my fault.
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Has that, I mean, I mean, surely it's, it's, it's surprised you in that, you know, in a sense,
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until you enter that arena, you're never prepared for all the tsunami of nonsense that's going to be
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thrown at you. But were you aware of these realities previously in academia, in the general,
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because let me give you the, the, the reason why I'm asking this, because one of the things that has
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frustrated me, this is not at all levied at you, but you now have an awakening of many people,
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including, for example, many powerful, uh, Jewish philanthropists who suddenly have awakened to
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realities that some of us have been warning about for decades. And it's only that they've awakened
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because it has now personally come to their backyard. Right. So it is my alma mater that is
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now affected with this lunacy. And I am a donor. Therefore I'm awakened out of my otherwise apathetic
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stupor. Now I say that not to be sort of vengeful against those folks, because it's better that they
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wake up late rather than never. But, you know, were you already, even before you did that infamous or
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famous, you know, passionate plea, were you already seeing some of the writing on the wall or was that
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the thing that kind of catapulted you into reality? Um, I wish I could give you a simple answer. The
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answer is both. And, and it's important to note, like, I agree with the language you're using of
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awakening. Right. But that's also the language of the woke, right? Woke comes from like we woke. And I
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used, I don't like the label woke, but I used to consider myself as someone who has awakened to
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other people's pain, right? That, that was the idea, original idea of woke. Like I am now, my eyes are
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open. I see other people's pain. What I did not realize is that this so-called woke crowd, their eyes
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are closed to, they're open to everyone's pain except one group. Yeah. Right. So very, so like I actually
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feel now, and I know it might make people feel bad about me saying that, I feel more woke than ever
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before because I can see everyone's pains, including Palestinians and including Israelis and Jews. And
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this, this crowd, this mob, it's not really a crowd, it's a mob. They're, they're closing their eyes to
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one group's pain. So they're not really woke. But, but to answer your question, like, no, I did not see
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it coming, but I think it's partially because I did not, we did not want to see it coming.
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Right. We did not want to see it coming. We, we, when Kanye West went on a diatribe against Jews,
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no one spoke up in academia. Literally no one spoke up and we kind of brushed it away.
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When in Charlottesville, they were shouting, Jews will not replace us. None of my colleagues,
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no one spoke up and we kind of like brushed it under the rug. Pittsburgh shooting, there was very
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little, if anything. When Dave Chappelle went on Saturday Night Live on an antisemitic rant for 15
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minutes, that was the, that was the first breaking point for me. And I went online and this, I've never
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written anything about antisemitism before. It was all academic. And I went online and I said like,
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that it's disturbing to me, but none of my, the people that I hear speaking about any other kind of
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racism and prejudice aren't saying anything. They're actually calling him a genius. This was
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November, 2022. And no one, and it, that, that message kind of like died in the ether. Nobody said
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anything. And then when October 7th and the aftermath arrived, the, the, these seemingly isolated
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incidents that I was used to see in my life now connected. And, and now I can see like, I should
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have known, but I didn't, I saw all the dots. I just didn't want to connect the dots. But when you
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connect the dot, it's, it draws a very clear picture. And the picture is of antisemitism, or at least
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with a blasé attitude towards antisemitism. I don't think most of, most of my colleagues are not
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antisemitic, but it's not in their top priority to stop antisemitism as it is to stop other types
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of prejudice. So the next question is probably, I mean, it's multifactorial. So there are probably,
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you know, many different angles that you could tackle, but what do you think explains the fact
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that when someone is so committed to fighting injustice for N minus one groups, they can't somehow
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extend it to the Nth group called Jews. Is it because Jews are inherently, or certainly the, the
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stereotype of the Jew that most people see as someone who is very successful, very powerful, and
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therefore I can't ever put a schema of the Jew being the victim because in all of my interactions
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with Jews, I mean, I remember the first time that I went to Israel when I was 18, the summer, the first
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summer that I went to Israel, one of the reactions I had when I would enter the bus is, oh my God,
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the, the bus driver is Jewish. And the guy who's picking up the garbage, garbage is Jewish. And I
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thought, because I'm only used to seeing that the Jews are not to use antisemitic stereotype, they're,
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they're bankers and they're physicians and they're professors and they're music orchestrators. They're,
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they're not garbage. So could that be, could it be as simple as that?
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It, well, nothing is as simple as that, right? But like, you're right. I mean, the model minority,
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Jews have been a model minority in, at least in the North American and Western Europe
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context for years. And partially because Jews convince themselves that if we are, if we will be
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just a model minority, they'll accept us and leave us alone, right? So ironically, because we did
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everything right, we're being punished for it. But I think the other thing is that Jews, the Jewish
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people are a very certain type of group that cannot be easily categorized in the binaries that have
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completely infiltrated every academic speak. Yes. Right. We're not just a religion, because
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I'm an atheist, and I believe you are as well. You know, I celebrate some of the holidays, you know,
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for tradition, but I don't believe in God. We, we're not just an ethnicity, because my ancestors came
00:25:04.600
from Eastern Europe. And I read that you're from, from Lebanon. Yes. Arabic speaking, but apparently
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I'm a fake Arabic guy. So, you know, so you're, so it's not just an ethnicity. It's also a group you
00:25:19.220
can join, you can convert to. So we call ourselves the Jewish people, not the Jewish race, not the Jewish
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religion, the Jewish people. And therefore people can't really peg us. They, you know, they say, I care
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about all ethnicities, but Jews are not an ethnicity. I care about all religions, but Jews,
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maybe Judaism is, but Jews are not. So it gives them a carte blanche to just not care. This is why
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we don't fall under the auspices of DEI. Yeah. Right. Which, you know, I, I find, I, I think
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the DEI initiatives, um, at their core are important initiatives, right? Diversity is important. Equity
00:26:03.480
is important. Inclusion is important. Maybe taken to the extreme, it leads to some, you know, backfiring
00:26:09.820
policies, but the core ideas are important and valuable. But the fact that the inclusion of Jews
00:26:16.640
in academia is not a priority, it's not even under the auspices of DEI, the felt inclusion,
00:26:22.800
then that shows me that society is built up in a way that doesn't really require the inclusion of
00:26:29.420
Jews as an equal ethnic minority or religious minority or whatever kind of minority.
00:26:35.860
No, I, I like that answer of the, so I've recently been giving several talks on, you know, the increase
00:26:42.180
in global Jew hatred and so on. And so I break up the sources of hate into different categories.
00:26:48.520
Sometimes they can overlap, but there's sort of three distinct groups. There is of course,
00:26:53.660
sort of the progressive leftist academic type who typically will drive their Jew hatred as relating
00:27:02.320
to, you know, the geopolitics of the Middle East, the Jew as the oppressor, the Palestinians as the
00:27:07.840
noble victims and so on. So there's that dynamic. So that's one group. There is the Jews won't replace
00:27:13.360
as kind of, you know, neo-Nazi types. And then there is the third type, which is the Islamic-based
00:27:20.820
Jew hatred. Now, one of the things that surprised me after October 7th is the extent to which,
00:27:28.920
in whichever direction I turned, I was getting it from all angles. Whereas at first, you know,
00:27:33.780
in previous years, there might be some incident that causes neo-Nazis to focus on me obsessively
00:27:39.860
for a month and then go away or another time. There might be another group, but here it was
00:27:44.160
sort of an orgiastic fest. In your case, are you able, not that we want to create a competition of
00:27:50.140
who hates us the most, but is there a unique group or is there a unique dynamic where you say, you know,
00:27:56.040
it's largely coming from the progressive academics or what's your thought on that?
00:28:02.500
Oh, wow. You're basically asking me to analyze who are all the people that are hating me now.
00:28:08.540
In the last four months, you know, the weird thing is that... So first of all, I should say,
00:28:14.280
in the last four months, I've been getting more love and support from strangers than I ever had
00:28:19.120
in my life. And I'm so grateful for that. I couldn't do this without people reaching out.
00:28:24.340
Although to me, it's always a bit kind of humbling because I feel like at least get to know me first
00:28:29.680
before you love me. But I think the same thing happens. So I've been getting the last four months,
00:28:35.420
the most immense hatred and vitriol for... from random strangers. And I'm talking thousands and
00:28:45.740
thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people. And I say, like, at least get to know me before you
00:28:50.480
hate me. You might find something that you actually merits hatred, but get to know me first.
00:28:55.480
I've realized that I've become a tabula rasa for haters, right? They can project whatever they want
00:29:07.400
at me. And that's what I've been experiencing. So I've mostly been experiencing it from what I call
00:29:13.000
the illiberal left, right? These people in the, you know, Poison Ivy League schools, in the
00:29:19.280
inhumanities, you know, like I created labels for them because I don't know how to think about them.
00:29:26.220
But they project onto me this white supremacist racist idea, which is completely not like, you know,
00:29:37.160
they say that I'm a genocidal baby murderer, like just the most horrific stuff. I have also been
00:29:44.460
getting bits from the extreme right who are projecting the opposite, right? These are the
00:29:52.400
globalists that are trying to change the order and like the non-whites are trying to bring the whites
00:29:58.120
down. So like, you know, David Baddiel talks about Schrodinger's Jew, the Jew that is both white
00:30:03.620
and non-white at the same time. And I've been experiencing that. So both are happening at the
00:30:09.120
same time. It's way, way stronger, given the current context. And given what I've been speaking
00:30:22.320
By the way, I know David Baddiel. I just had him on my show recently. Yeah. So go ahead.
00:30:27.240
It's it's but this is this is for me. This is part of why I did not want to see or was unable to
00:30:36.280
see. Like in the past four months, I've read David Baddiel's both of his books. Yeah. Jews
00:30:40.740
don't count is is incredible in in not just explaining what's happening, but foreseeing
00:30:45.940
what's happening. I've read Barry Weiss's How to Fight Antisemitism, which I think should be
00:30:51.540
required reading, just like people were saying that the new Jim Crow should be a required reading.
00:30:56.320
And I agree, like both things should be required reading. Even if you disagree with the points made,
00:31:01.100
you should be required to engage with the questions. I've been reading, I read people love
00:31:08.340
that Jews like just try to understand what's going on. And and these many of these authors,
00:31:14.100
they they split the anti-Semites into exactly these three buckets, the illiberal left, the
00:31:20.560
ultra extreme right. And then this fundamentalist religious view that comes from mostly from from Islam,
00:31:30.380
but not necessarily just from Islam. But but but again, it's a very fundamentalist and religious
00:31:35.240
because it's clear that I would say 95 percent, 90 percent, I don't know, like a very, very high
00:31:42.600
percentage of Muslims have no problem with Jews. Right. They're just peaceful people. It's clear,
00:31:49.160
just like the most Jews don't have a problem with anyone else and most Christians don't have a problem
00:31:55.260
anyone else. But it's it's the extremists that are leading the fight now. Yeah. And that's that's the
00:32:03.020
concern. And I think I mean, when you have extremists of a very large number, then that number, even though
00:32:09.840
it's very small, becomes a problem. Right. So if you've got two billion people, of which only 10 percent
00:32:15.860
have bad views, we can contest whether that's true, because there are few surveys and other surveys that have
00:32:23.280
looked at, you know, really quite vile anti-Semitism stemming from those cultures and they hover. It may
00:32:30.980
cause you some disconcertment to know that it it's about 95 to 99 percent. So we can contest whether it's in the
00:32:40.160
minority. Although, of course, I, too, and certainly by virtue of being Lebanese, have tons of Arabic
00:32:46.760
speaking friends and supporters and fans. No, but but, God, I think I think it's important to note that
00:32:53.540
I really it's hard for me to believe that it's even close to the numbers you're saying. But but to me,
00:33:01.380
it doesn't matter. Even if there's one person who doesn't believe something in a group, we shouldn't
00:33:08.080
judge the entire group. Of course. That's why that's why I have been vocally like speaking
00:33:14.100
against not just what Hamas is doing, but the rise in Islamophobia. Islamophobia is as abhorrent
00:33:21.460
as anti-Semitism. It's just I don't differentiate between the two. At the same time, just as I can
00:33:27.940
say there are extremist Jews, right wingers that are just extremist Jews that I completely denounce.
00:33:33.820
There are extremist Christians and there are extremist Muslims, but most people are not. I
00:33:39.840
strongly believe and maybe I want to believe, but but I you know, I think, you know, innocent until
00:33:45.120
proven guilty is an extremely important idea in my mind. Oh, yes. I just wrote an article on
00:33:49.960
deontological principles, which is absolute statements of morality. And and one of the things
00:33:55.180
I talk about is that you should never violate deontological ethics using a consequentialist ethos,
00:34:01.140
right? So you don't say I believe in presumption of innocence, but not for Brett Kavanaugh. I believe
00:34:06.500
in freedom of speech, but not for Donald Trump. I believe in journalistic integrity, but not when
00:34:11.980
it comes to suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story because it was too important to suppress it
00:34:17.920
because we don't want Donald Trump. So I I'm completely sold on the idea that there are foundational
00:34:22.820
values that we should never violate. And the same goes for both sides, right? Because like you gave
00:34:28.600
examples of the illiberal left, but which is happens a lot, but also from the the extreme
00:34:36.340
right, they engage in the same things. And and really, it's about if we have a deontological
00:34:41.980
rule, we should follow it. Now, of course, some people would say that I am trying to silence free
00:34:47.600
speech. Right. So but again, like I think the important thing is you can have a deontological
00:34:54.260
rule like I believe in free speech and still say, yet I believe in the boundaries of free speech.
00:35:01.640
But if you set those boundaries on a case by case situation, that's a problem. Sure. Right. But
00:35:09.180
but if we if we set it up for everyone, then I think we should that's that's something that makes
00:35:15.880
society stronger. Do you so earlier you were mentioning that when someone writes to you and
00:35:21.220
they say, you know, I love you, I admire you and you say, well, get to know me first or
00:35:26.240
and similarly, the other side of the coin when they hate you. Let me talk about the negative
00:35:30.120
one. One of the things that causes me great angst and I get dismayed by it is not so much
00:35:36.520
when someone writes to me a specific hateful thing, but in a sense, it's more pure my angst,
00:35:43.680
which is I despise that there is a world where someone can exhibit such diabolical hatred for me,
00:35:53.420
where if in reality they got to know me, they actually I'm willing to bet that I can get them
00:36:00.260
to actually like me, but that somehow they are unreachable. Right. So that, you know, if I had all
00:36:06.600
the time in the world, I would love to sit down with every single person who sends me really just
00:36:11.640
remarkably hateful stuff. Like I've never invoked this kind of hatred to another human being. And
00:36:18.840
I've had a very rough childhood growing up in the Middle East and I've never, look, our house was
00:36:24.000
taken by Palestinians. I hold no ill will to general Palestinians. My parents were kidnapped by Fatah.
00:36:30.720
I don't hold ill will to general Palestinians. And yet people can ascribe the worst traits to me.
00:36:37.900
And that actually leaves me quite sad and at times heartbroken. Do you feel the same way? Or do you
00:36:44.720
think that there is some magical future utopia, unicornia where kumbaya, we can get rid of this? Or is
00:36:52.360
this part of the architecture of the human spirit?
00:36:54.680
Look, I'll start by saying that my entire world view about human nature has been shaken since October 7th.
00:37:14.260
I'll start by saying that. And first, just like seeing the things that happened on October 7th and
00:37:19.400
then seeing the reactions here and around the world. But we also like, you know, I was
00:37:25.180
I was enthralled with social psychology as an academic
00:37:30.300
field exactly because while it was, you know, it started in 1897 with social facilitation work
00:37:43.060
It really got a boost after World War Two, where there were two main questions being asked, you
00:37:49.880
know, why do people how do people do really evil stuff?
00:38:00.460
And the second was, why do good people stay silent in the face of evil?
00:38:05.800
And that's the Solomon-Ashmark. And I think that even while I have studied this, I have taught
00:38:14.460
this, I have still really underestimated the power of the situation. The situation and social norms
00:38:22.480
are just stronger than any individual will. And that's what we're seeing now. The hatred that people
00:38:30.660
are exhibiting now towards me personally, towards and forget me, like, who am I? I'm like someone
00:38:36.720
who spoke up. We're exhibiting towards the victims. And by the way, we should be intellectually humble
00:38:45.020
here. Some people are exhibiting it towards the victims in Gaza. Like the fact that people are
00:38:50.640
experiencing, exhibiting such hatred, to me just shows that the conformity and social norms are stronger
00:38:57.640
and, you know, you really need strong character. That being said, we should not accept it.
00:39:04.280
And unlike in the 1930s in Germany, now we have a record. We have a public record. And when this
00:39:12.420
public hysteria, this antisemitism ebbs and flows, when it calms down, we will remember. We will
00:39:20.280
remember all the people who openly, you know, called for violence against Jews, who personally
00:39:30.380
attacked Jews and Israelis just for speaking up, like myself. And I think one way to deal with this
00:39:40.580
and make the world better, and you know, and I have to be optimistic just because I don't have any other
00:39:44.980
option, right? But one way to deal with this is create stronger situations, right? You know,
00:39:52.000
we can't rely on people to be good people. We can't rely on people to uphold norms. We need to
00:39:58.600
create institutions that, you know, have clear boundaries. Because if we don't, then we'll just
00:40:05.940
see this again and again. And this time it's the Jews, but it's not. We're not always going to go for
00:40:10.920
the Jews, right? Well, there's an expression, by the way, you probably, you may know it, given that
00:40:16.260
you hail from Israel, but it's a Middle Eastern thing that says, first we come for the Saturday
00:40:20.480
people, then we come for the Sunday people, to your point, right? So it may start with the Jews,
00:40:26.140
that might be the proverbial, you know, canaries in the coal mine. But, you know, hatred is not
00:40:30.560
restricted to only one group. So once we finish with group A, we move on to group B. But that's what,
00:40:35.720
in a sense, makes me a bit more pessimistic in that I don't think we learn from history.
00:40:40.740
I don't, I mean, yes, most people are lovely, most people are kind, most people are peaceful,
00:40:46.900
but it is part of the architecture of the human mind, regrettably, to be coalitional,
00:40:54.460
to view the world as us versus them, blue team versus red team. And so, you know, a few months ago,
00:41:02.340
I don't think you and I knew of each other yet. I had posted a tweet, Shai, that had gotten a lot of
00:41:09.500
attention. But for a very interesting reason, I think it had gotten, I don't know, 11, 12 million
00:41:13.880
views, because it was a very dark and solemn tweet that I had put out. And now that had surprised
00:41:20.800
people, because most people knew me as someone who was always happy and joking. And sometimes my jokes
00:41:26.400
get me into trouble, like making the joke about being a Mossad agent. And that people were saying,
00:41:31.880
well, if God's sad is exhibiting, you know, he's putting up his hands in defeat, and that there's
00:41:36.980
no way out of this, maybe we should be paying attention. So I understand the reflex that, hey,
00:41:42.700
I have no other option but to be optimistic. And I get that. That's why I get up every day. And I do
00:41:47.760
this show, because there's always hope, there's always a tomorrow. But I can't help but feel that
00:41:54.040
it's only going to get worse. Get me out of my pessimistic bent, Professor Davidei.
00:42:03.760
I can't, I don't, I wish I could. So let me tell you something about my, my Israeli summer,
00:42:11.780
last summer, summer of 2023. So, you know, in the in the months leading to the summer,
00:42:20.820
my wife and I were kind of involved in the pro-democracy protests happening in New York City
00:42:27.080
about what's happening, the judicial, the planned judicial reform in Israel. And when we went to
00:42:32.700
Israel, we started going to the protests there. And there was one thing that a woman was said in a
00:42:39.540
protest while she was speaking, that stuck in my mind. And she said, despair is not an effective
00:42:49.840
policy. Or I guess the better translation is, despair is not an effective plan of action.
00:42:59.300
Because up until that point, I felt like I'm going to protest, nothing's going to happen.
00:43:04.160
You know, they're going to do, the ruler class are going to do whatever they want, period.
00:43:08.780
But when she said that, I realized like, yeah, even if I feel that, even if I wake up despair,
00:43:13.580
go to sleep despair, I have to go and act as if I am not despair.
00:43:18.020
And I think it's the same here. Regardless, it's independent of how pessimistic I am
00:43:26.580
about what's happening in the Israeli-Palestinian context, what's happening with anti-Semitism in
00:43:33.980
the US, what's happening with the silencing campaign against me in my professional society
00:43:41.080
and at Columbia. Independent of all that, despair is not an effective plan of action. I have to
00:43:47.580
keep going as if I believe that this will have an effect. Hopefully, hopefully it will. But if not,
00:43:56.180
then I know that I'll tell my kids, you know what, that year 2023-2024, I spoke on.
00:44:03.220
Yeah, beautiful. Well, actually, in the last chapter of the parasitic mind, I used the call
00:44:10.000
to action, activate your inner honey badger. And the reason why I use that, Shai, I'm sure you can
00:44:16.660
understand it, is because the honey badger is not arguably is, has been ranked actually by animal
00:44:22.280
behaviorists and zoologists as the most fierce animal alive. It's the size of a small dog, and yet
00:44:28.060
it could withstand the attack of six adult lions. How does it do that? It's fierce. It's ferocious.
00:44:33.760
Now, of course, when I tell people activate your inner honey badger, it doesn't mean it's not a call
00:44:37.280
to violence, but it's a call of defending things that you believe in. So when you stood up there,
00:44:43.700
knowing that you're going to probably get a lot of blowback, as an assistant professor who's not
00:44:48.340
yet tenured, and said, hey, I'm going to speak my mind because it's the right thing to do, you were
00:44:53.720
exactly hating the call of activating your honey badger. So thank you for that.
00:44:59.360
I love that. I'll tell you what, like, I, I would take that. I felt more like a cornered rat.
00:45:07.040
But like, I just felt like they cornered me. They put me...
00:45:10.100
Try not to use rat as an imagery for the Jew, because you're only going to be adding...
00:45:15.120
I'm playing into her own story, right? But like, I really... And to be honest, I am, I did not
00:45:23.200
anticipate all of this. I did not, like, if I had, I don't, I want to believe it, I would have still
00:45:30.880
spoken up. I don't know. And that's the thing. The whole point of, like, people attacking me
00:45:37.520
personally, right? So here's, here's what I've noticed on social media, especially on Twitter and,
00:45:42.180
you know, on social media. What, the stronger the argument that I make, including videos of other
00:45:50.360
people's, like, highlighting other people's support for Hamas, linking these, you know, specific
00:45:57.760
organizations to people that are known to have been involved with Hamas, right? The stronger I make
00:46:02.880
the argument, the more vitriolic the hatred towards me, right? Because, and we know this from basic
00:46:11.500
social psychological... I was going to say, it's like a basic effect. When you cannot
00:46:16.580
argue with the, with the logic, you argue with the person, the speaker, right? So that's what I've
00:46:25.780
been experiencing. So I actually see it as like, yeah, the more they hate me, the more it means that
00:46:29.940
they cannot argue with the claims. If they could easily break down the claims, then they wouldn't
00:46:35.320
have to hate me. But what worries me is, they are not doing this because they care about me.
00:46:42.460
Nobody cares about shy of the diarrhea. Like, you know, I mean, my mom does, my parents, but like,
00:46:47.000
like, these people don't really care about me. They care about the fact that an unapologetic Jew
00:46:53.600
is speaking up. And by silencing me, or at least showing the cost of speaking up, they're able to
00:47:01.840
silence other people. That is my concern, that there are thousands and thousands of Jewish and
00:47:10.560
non-Jewish professors who want to speak up, but they see what happens to me. And we're like, that's
00:47:16.580
not, that's not a cost that's worth their time. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, that's exactly the
00:47:22.420
strategy. Terrorize someone who's high profile so that all of the ones who are thinking of coming
00:47:27.860
into the battle will stay away from it. But the irony, I'd say the irony, sorry, I forgot you go
00:47:33.200
off. The irony is I was not high profile. They made me high profile. You know, my, my, my social media
00:47:40.880
posts that go the most viral and end up being in the newspaper is because these haters that the
00:47:49.520
anti-Semites are the ones amplifying them. Right. Right. They, they are building me up to this symbol
00:47:55.480
so they can pull me down. It was like, and I can only say like, look, I don't like the hate, but
00:47:59.180
thank you for giving me the platform. You're helping me reach more people. Indeed. Uh, you know, I, uh,
00:48:05.580
before we did our, our, our, started our conversation, I just wanted to get a sense. That's how I found
00:48:10.480
out that you were from Cornell and so on. I went to check your CV and, uh, you are way more, uh,
00:48:16.800
productive than president or former president Claudine Gay. And you're only in a system. I think
00:48:23.040
maybe in 2022 alone, you had published more stuff than her. And, uh, I dare say that it's probably none
00:48:31.280
of it is plagiarized. Can you imagine how productive I'd be if I actually plagiarized as well? Exactly.
00:48:36.700
So I'm thinking, uh, you know, maybe, uh, someone should be looking at your CV to look what a
00:48:43.400
productive scholar looks like. Are you at all concerned given the objective metrics of your CV
00:48:48.740
about any potential future, you know, tenure decision, or do you feel that, uh, it will,
00:48:55.520
it will work out fine, notwithstanding your public engagements? If you asked me on October 6th,
00:49:00.840
you'd get a different answer from now. So like an objective metrics, um, I'm doing fine and I
00:49:08.700
shouldn't be concerned, right? Like I am, I am publishing, I'm doing what I see as good work
00:49:14.860
and publishing in good places. I get really good teaching evaluations. I love teaching. Um, you know,
00:49:21.880
I've been in different, uh, awards for teaching. Like I just enjoy teaching. I see it as a mission.
00:49:27.140
Um, but we also know how academia works. Academia works in a subjective matter. You bring in 20
00:49:35.920
people, you know, colleagues into a room, they look at the objective number and then they make
00:49:40.840
objective performance and they make subjective judgments. And then they elicit subjective judgments
00:49:45.960
from other people in the field in order to make a seemingly objective argument.
00:49:51.880
Now I'm not the first or the last person to note the, the problematic nature of the way things are
00:50:01.040
being, you know, the decisions are being held in academia. I will not be surprised if my activism
00:50:08.540
costs me my job. Do I want it to cost me my job? No, I love Columbia. That's the whole reason I'm
00:50:16.040
fighting is because I think Columbia and universities can and should do better. And I want to be in an
00:50:22.980
institution that does better. That's the only reason I'm fighting. If I thought that I can't
00:50:27.660
make it better, if I thought that, or if I hated it here, I would leave. But I think this is, you know,
00:50:34.960
it's a great institution on paper and I just want to make it great on in practice as well. Um,
00:50:40.820
but yeah, right now my job is in danger. I mean, there's stuff that I cannot share yet, but, um,
00:50:49.140
I would just say that, you know, there are certain entities within the university who would be very,
00:50:58.300
very happy to see me silenced and go away and are using whatever processes they have to weaponizing
00:51:07.980
whatever process to shut me down. Now, some people, when, you know, when I speak about that,
00:51:12.720
some people will say, look, you know, he's, you know, look how he's crying. You know, it's about
00:51:17.480
the, he's dealing with the consequence. Like, yeah, if this is the consequence of me speaking up,
00:51:22.460
I'll bear the consequences, but I'll also highlight the consequences again to show people what happens
00:51:28.800
when you speak up against the, you know, the homogenous view on campus.
00:51:37.460
Beautifully said. Is there any way that if people want to directly support you in whichever form that
00:51:44.440
might take, uh, please tell us how they might do so now.
00:51:48.640
I thank you so much. I mean, so first of all, I've been telling everyone, like everyone who sends me
00:51:54.020
a private message. I thank them so much because just, just knowing that there are people out there
00:51:59.220
already is very helpful. Um, it makes me feel less alone. Uh, I ask people who are, who feel safe
00:52:06.200
doing so to speak up, you know, speak up on social media. Um, and again, not because they specifically
00:52:14.060
care about me, but because they care about the consequences of silencing someone like me,
00:52:19.800
just like I would speak up for someone else. Uh, and then there's someone who set up, I don't know
00:52:24.480
this person, but I met them through social media and Instagram and set up a website called saveshy.com
00:52:31.220
where they were like, Hey, like he said, like, I think it's a, he, uh, I assume because his name
00:52:37.300
is Abba says that's his thing. So I assumed it was a, he, um, he says, um, we got your back. And I was
00:52:43.720
like, I don't know this person, but like, it's, it shows me what real camaraderie is and it's, and
00:52:49.800
I'll tell you what, it's not buying some, you know, something on Amazon to make you seem like an
00:52:55.980
activist. It's doing these kinds of things. Beautiful. I, by the way, for those of you who
00:53:00.080
don't know, save shy shy is S H A I. So save shy.com. What a pleasure having you. Uh, I'm sure that,
00:53:08.180
uh, only good things will happen as a result of this. There are little, little bits that you have
00:53:13.540
to go through now, but in the grand scheme of life, later in life, when you look back,
00:53:17.380
you'll have nothing to regret about because you did the courageous thing. Thank you so much for
00:53:20.780
being on, uh, stay on the line so we could say off a goodbye offline. Thank you so much,
00:53:25.500
real pleasure having you. Thank you so much. Cheers.