Stephan Grigat is Lecturer for Political Science at the University of Vienna and at the University of Passau, Permanent Fellow at the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European and Jewish Studies at the University of Potsdam and Research Fellow at the Herzl Institute for the Study of Zionism and History at the University of Haifa.
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.