David Arthur French is an American lawyer who works for The National Review. French was once President of a group called the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. French defended an Arab University Professor who was fired for saying "Death to Israel" on the grounds that hatred of Israel was not a good enough reason to fire someone. Then a woman named Bari Weiss made a documentary called Columbia Unbecoming accusing several professors at Columbia University of anti-Semitism. The New York Civil Liberties Union accused Weiss of being opposed to allowing Professors to have their rights to their own opinions saying that a student should only challenge a professor's opinion if the professor allows them to. Weiss then wrote to David French, President of the Foundation for Individual Rights In Education asking if this were true. French came to Weiss's defence saying that Professors were allowed to have their opinions about Israel, but that Weiss was not saying that they could not, only that students were also allowed to have their own opinions about it, that yes professors could choose what they wanted to talk about but that no students did not need their professors' permission to disagree with what they said and that yes Bari Weiss had said she was angry about every Columbia Professor in the Middle East department being against Israel but that she wasn't saying that they should be fired for that only that Columbia should hire at least some teachers who were pro-Israel and that she was not telling the government that they should force Columbia to hire at least some pro-Israel professors but she was saying that Columbia should hire more pro-Israel professors.