After a little over one year in office, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik has resigned, according to a message Shafik sent to the Columbia community.
“I write with sadness to tell you that I am stepping down as president of Columbia University effective August 14, 2024,” Shafik wrote in a message to the Columbia community. “It has also been a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community. This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community.”
In an email minutes after Shafik’s message, Co-Chairs of the Columbia Board of Trustees David Greenwald and Claire Shipman thanked Shafik for her service and said that they “regretfully accept” her resignation and named Katrina Armstrong, the Dean of Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, as the interim president.
“I am deeply honored to be called to serve as Interim President of our beloved institution,” Armstrong wrote in her own message to the university. “Challenging times present both the opportunity and the responsibility for serious leadership to emerge from every group and individual within a community. This is such a time at Columbia.
“As I step into this role, I am acutely aware of the trials the University has faced over the past year. We should neither understate their significance, nor allow them to define who we are and what we will become,” she continued.
Shafik had been caught in the middle of controversy related to antisemitism on campus after Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 and protests on campus related to the conflict as well as her decision to call in the New York Police Department to clear encampments on Columbia’s campus in the spring.
More than 100 people were arrested on Columbia’s campus during NYPD’s sweep, which came after protestors occupied buildings on the campus.
Tensions have been rising on the campus since the beginning of August, with three Columbia deans stepping down last week for messages that contained antisemitic tropes.
On August 8, protestors vandalized the home of Chief Operating Officer Cas Holloway with antisemitic phrases and Nazi Swastikas, according to NBC.
On August 1, House Education Committee Chair Virginia Foxx also threatened the university with subpoenas if it failed to provide information and documents related to an investigation her committee started in February into the university’s response to antisemitism on Campus.
“During Shafik’s presidency, a disturbing wave of antisemitic harassment, discrimination, and disorder engulfed Columbia university’s campus,” Foxx wrote in response to the resignation. “Every student has the right to a safe learning environment. Period. Yet, flagrant violations of the law and the university rules went unpunished.”
Pro-Palestine organizers had also signaled that they plan on resuming encampments and other protests once school resumes, Columbia’s Students for Justice in Palestine celebrated the announcement.
“After months of chanting “Minouche Shafik you can’t hide” she finally got the memo,” the group wrote. “To be clear, any future president who does not pay heed to the Columbia student body’s overwhelming demand for divestment will end up exactly as President Shafik did.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and other House Republicans also visited Columbia’s campus in April to denounce Shafik and Columbia for failing to protect Jewish students on campus during the encampments. During that April 24 visit, Johnson had called on Shafik to resign.
“THREE DOWN, so many to go,” House Republican Conference leader Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who has dedicated much of the last year to investigating university presidents for their conduct in the wake of pro-Palestine protests, posted on X. “Columbia University’s President Minouche Shafik’s failed presidency was untenable and that is was only a matter of time before her forced resignation.”
Stefanik appeared to reference University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill and Harvard President Claudine Gay, who both resigned during this academic year in the post.
Both Gay and Magill testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in December and faced heavy criticism for not committing to discipline students who called for the genocide of Jewish people.
Magill resigned soon after that hearing, and Gay resigned in early January following allegations that she plagiarized in her scholarship.
Shafik was not at that hearing because she was attending COP28.
Shafik did testify before Congress in April about her university’s response to antisemitism, where House members questioned her for not effectively dealing with protestors on campus who made Jewish students feel unsafe.
During the April 17 hearing, Shafik also revealed that several faculty members were under investigation for comments they had made about Israeli or Jewish students, including Katherine Franke, who was denounced for a comment during a January interview where it seemed as though she was saying Columbia should not allow people who have served in the Israeli Defense Forces on campus.
Franke has said that was not her intent and she responded to Shafik’s resignation by saying “capitulating to the bullies didn’t work out well for her.”
“President Minouche Shafik threw me under the bus when she testified before Congress, but I’m still an employee of Columbia University, she’s not. Turns out that capitulating to the bullies didn’t work out well for her. It never does,” Franke wrote.
Protestors began occupying one of Columbia’s main outdoor spaces hours before Shafik appeared before Congress on April 17. The next day, Shafik authorized the New York Police Department to sweep the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” NYPD arrested over 100 protestors during that action.
On April 30, after pro-Palestine protestors started another encampment and occupied buildings on campus including Hamilton Hall, the site of a student occupation during the Vietnam War, Shafik brought NYPD back to campus, leading to the arrests of more than 100 people. Police used stun grenades during that action.
She also faced criticism from Jewish students and organizations for allowing the encampments, which were protesting Israel’s war in Gaza, to stand for days before they were removed. Jewish students reported intimidation and antisemitic actions from protestors present at the encampment.
The University Senate for the Faculty of Arts and Science approved a vote of no confidence in Shafik in May. Of the university’s 4,600 full-time faculty members, only 900 participated in the vote, with 65 percent voting no confidence.
Updated at 11:06 p.m. EST.
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