Yad Vashem Chairman to Columbia president: 'The time has come for you to take a stand'

In a letter to Columbia University’s president, Minouche Shafik, on Friday, the Chairman of Yad Vashem, Dani Dayan, called on Dr. Shafik to act as a leader and take a moral principled stand against the calls by faculty and students to eliminate the Jewish State.

YV Chairman @AmbDaniDayan calls @Columbia President Shafik to act as a leader and take a moral principled stand against the calls by faculty and students to eliminate the Jewish State. "Her silence on this matter is equivalent to consent to bigotry." pic.twitter.com/XOAToSEkPB

— Yad Vashem (@yadvashem) April 26, 2024

Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, is the world leader in Holocaust education, documentation, and research.

Initially the letter provides examples of the actions Dr. Shafik has taken as, what Dayan describes, the actions one would take in an “administrator role.”

“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,” Dayan said. 

He said that she was not hired to be a CEO or a crisis manager but rather to be a leader of one of the most prestigious universities in the world. 

Dayan argues, “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.”

Universities are not immune to bigotry

"Your decision to deal only with the behavior – or the manners – of the demonstrators is not sustainable," Dayan warns and then states that it is just as “despicable” to be a polite KKK member as to be a “thuggish” one. He adds that a moral leader should advocate against both equally.

Universities are not immune to bigotry, and not all causes that professors and students advocate for are “good,” Dayan appeals. He then provides the example of Heidelberg University in Germany, which was a prestigious German University. He proceeds to point out that in the 1930s, students and professors burned Jewish and other “corrupt” books in the university square. “Its faculty developed pseudo-academic fields like race theory, eugenics, and forced euthanasia. Heidelberg did have administrators. Unfortunately, it lacked moral leadership,” Dayan added. 

The letter concludes, “Madam President, Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace laureate, defined indifference as ‘the most insidious danger of all.’ The great civil rights leader and fellow Nobelist Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. added that ‘the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.” 

Dayan implored Dr. Shafik to “lead with moral principles, not only with administrative regulations. Speak up.”