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 anti-semitism 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 anti-semitic tropes.
On August 8, protestors vandalized the home of Chief Operating Officer Cas Holloway with anti-semitic phrases and Nazi Swastikas, according to NBC.
Pro-Palestine organizers had also signaled that they plan on resuming encampments and other protests once school resumes.
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.
“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 to 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 anti-semitism, where House members questioned her for not effectively dealing with protestors on campus who made Jewish students feel unsafe.
She ordered the removal of encampments on campus after that hearing and faced heavy criticism from protestors and droves of faculty members for calling in the NYPD without first consulting with the university’s senate.
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 anti-semitic 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 8:50 p.m. EST.
