An Israeli-American professor at Columbia University, Shai Davidai, is calling out Columbia’s student newspaper for endorsing Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral primary — a move that he says is forbidden for a non-profit organization under federal tax law.
Mr. Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia’s business school who has been outspoken in criticizing the university’s response to campus antisemitism, claimed on Tuesday that the student paper had “breached its non-profit status” by wading into the mayoral primary. He urged his community to report the paper to the Internal Revenue Service by filing a “formal complaint.”
“It’s time to make our colleges a partisan-free space for education,” he shared to his 106,000 followers on X. We won’t let @Columbia be run by ideologically-blinded bad faith actors,” he added in a second post.
According to the IRS, non-profit organizations are “absolutely prohibited” from “directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in” a political campaign of a candidate running for public office. The government agency specifically notes that verbal or written “public statements of position” either in favor or against a political candidate “clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity.”
Policy nonobservance, the IRS writes, “may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.”
The student-run newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator, operates under the Spectator Publishing Company, an independent non-profit organization that is managed by a board of trustees composed of Spectator alumni. Its 501(c)(3) status allows it to be exempt from taxes.
The paper formally pitched its support behind the Democratic Socialist candidate — who is now the presumptive Democratic nominee — via an editorial board Op-Ed that was published last week.
“Currently ranked second in most polls, the New York State Assembly member and his campaign have resonated with New Yorkers who have been repeatedly disappointed by the current administration,” the board wrote. They added that Mr. Mamdani “has grounded his campaign in bread-and-butter issues such as universal child care, free public transportation, and affordable housing,” in an effort that “echoes Senator Bernie Sanders’ brand of economic populism.”
The board addressed concerns over Mr. Mamdani’s lack of experience, though they argued that “we do not see Mamdani’s inexperience as a disqualifier for the mayoralty, but rather a characteristic that could bring a novel approach to solving long-standing issues in New York City.”
The group did not make mention of Mr. Mamdani’s views on Israel or Zionism, which came under scrutiny in his bid to lead a city that boasts the largest population of Jews outside of Israel. Mr. Mamdani has fielded criticism for his refusal to denounce the anti-Israel rallying cry “globalize the intifada,” his lack of recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, his comments that he would divest from Israel if elected, and more.
The paper also endorsed New York City Comptroller Brad Lander — who crossed endorsed with Mr. Mamdani — as their second-choice candidate, followed by City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams as their third. Lastly, the editorial board urged their readers not to rank candidate Andrew Cuomo, who they argued is “uniquely unfit to serve as mayor.”
The board notes at the bottom of the Op-Ed that the article “reflects the majority view of the editorial board at the Columbia Daily Spectator” and is “independent of Spectator’s news coverage and coverage by other Opinion columnists and writers.” They add that “Spectator’s corporate board, including the editor in chief and managing editor, are not members of the editorial board.”
The paper has not yet responded to Mr. Davidai’s claims nor the Sun’s request for comment.
This latest controversy comes just a few weeks after a former Columbia student and Spectator alumna publicly accused the school paper of orchestrating “the worst antisemitic attack I faced personally on campus.”
Eliana Goldin, who graduated from Columbia this May, shared in a now viral thread on X that the Spectator removed her from her post as a columnist after an old Instagram post was uncovered by anti-Israel student activists and misconstrued as a call for violence against Palestinians.
The post in question contained a poll in which Ms. Goldin asked her followers whether they would “kill someone from Amalek” — a biblical nation that is described in the Old Testament as an enemy to the Jews. The poll, Ms. Goldin writes, was meant to inspire typical Jewish debate over morality and faith and did not have anything to do with the Israel-Palestine conflict. The post was shared months before Hamas’s October 7 attack.
However, her post was shared on the Instagram page of Columbia’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, and racked up tens of thousands of likes. A few days later, Ms. Goldin wrote, the head of the paper’s opinion section gave her the boot.
“In the time when I needed support the most, the Columbia Daily Spectator — people I had once been friends with — left me to fend for myself,” she wrote in the thread. “No matter how much I explained to them that Amalek has nothing to do with Palestinians, they didn’t listen.”
In fact, the opinion editors turned around and posted an Op-Ed a few days later that reframed Ms. Goldin’s post as an example of “Zionist students” making “Instagram polls about whether their friends would kill Palestinians” and hyperlinked her post to the article.
“To be honest, part of me thinks this might be libel, but I have no idea — I’m no lawyer,” Ms. Goldin wrote. “All I know is that I told them the truth, explained to them the ins and outs of Amalek in the Jewish tradition, and then they published a lie that actively put me more in danger.”
The Spectator has denied that the decision to oust Ms. Polin was related to the poll or her Jewish identity. The deputy editorial page editor at the time, Milene Klein — a self proclaimed anti-zionist — said that Ms. Goldin was fired in response to the harassment she received after publishing her first column.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
