Ilan Troen is the president of the Association for Israel Studies and holds the Stoll Family Chair of Israel Studies at Brandeis University and Lopin Chair in Modern History at Ben-Gurion University. He is the immediate past president of the Association for Israel Studies, founding director of the Schusterman Center and founding editor of Israel Studies (Indiana University Press).
Our Voice of the Fortnight is from the Times of Israel's 'Wartime Diaries' podcast. In the immediate aftermath of October 7th, Shai Davidai – an Assistant Professor at Columbia University – became an unlikely public defender of Israel. And truthfully, even he was surprised by this turn of events: As a committed left-wing Israeli, he had spent years criticizing the government, and often took to the streets to demonstrate against its policies. But the atmosphere he witnessed on college campuses (and specifically on his own campus at Columbia), compelled him to speak up and speak out.