Columbia University President Minouche Shafik resigned Wednesday after she failed to prevent radical anti-Israel and antisemitic “encampments” on campus that led eventually to the violent occupation of a university building.
The Columbia Spectator reported:
University President Minouche Shafik will resign from her post effective Aug. 14, Shafik wrote in a Wednesday email to the Columbia community. The announcement comes only weeks before the beginning of the 2024-25 academic year and marks the end of a tumultuous year in the position.
During her time as president, Shafik faced fierce national scrutiny for her administration’s handling of pro-Palestinian student protests, academic freedom, and on-campus antisemitism. She is the third Ivy League president to resign from the position in relation to campus tensions over the war in Gaza following University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill and Harvard University’s Claudine Gay.
“Over the summer, I have been able to reflect and have decided that my moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead,” Shafik wrote. “I am making this announcement now so that new leadership can be in place before the new term begins.”
Shafik will be replaced by an interim president, Dr. Katrina Armstrong, who is Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Columbia, long seen as a haven for pro-Palestinian activism, exploded into a wave of antisemitism after the Hamas terror attack of October 7, such that Jewish and Israeli students and faculty members no longer felt safe there.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – APRIL 29: A demonstrator breaks the windows of the front door of the building in order to secure a chain around it to prevent authorities from entering on Tuesday, April 30, 2024 in New York City. Demonstrators from the pro-Palestine encampment on Columbia’s Campus barricade themselves inside Hamilton Hall, an academic building which has been occupied in past student movements,. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched around the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Columbia University as a 2 P.M. deadline to clear the encampment given to students by the university passed. The students were given a suspension warning if they do not meet the deadline. Columbia students were the first to erect an encampment in support of Palestine, with students demanding that the school divest from Israel amid the Israel-Hamas war, where more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip. (Photo by Alex Kent/Getty Images)
One Israeli faculty member, Shai Davidai, raised the alarm about the university’s failure to protect Jews on campus.
The protests on campus attracted participants from around New York City and elsewhere, who escalated the antisemitic rhetoric, even chanting in support of Hamas. One speaker during a campus event also praised Hamas.
The university, which was slow to react, suspended some pro-Palestinian organizations, but their members continued to participate in campus protests. In April, the university tried negotiating with a campus “encampment,” and failed.
Eventually, students took over Hamilton Hall in a violent break-in, during which they trapped some university custodians, vandalized the building, and destroyed university property. Police were called in to disperse the activists, but Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — who prosecuted President Donald Trump for allegedly failing to report a payment to an adult film star as a campaign expense — dropped most charges against the anti-Israel activists.
Shafik was seen as ineffective throughout the crisis. Though her testimony to the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee was less disastrous than that of the presidents of MIT, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania, which led to the resignation of the latter two, she was viewed as failing to manage her campus.
Rep. Richie Torres (D-NY) said in May that Shafik had been too weak and indecisive in the face of antisemitism: “Once there’s a crisis of confidence in the leader of the university, then chaos ensues,” he told CNBC. Columbia saw many of its most prominent donors suspend or cancel their commitments to the university. And three deans resigned last week over text messages during the crisis that mocked students who were complaining about antisemitism.
The Biden administration did little to stop the antisemitism on campus. The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights opened investigations into many universities, but the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division was silent.
Vice President Kamala Harris recently hired a liaison between her campaign and the Muslim and Arab communities, Nasrina Bargzie, who has a history of anti-Israel activism on campus, and who tried to dismiss Jewish students’ fears.