(Headline USA) Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., the chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, praised the departure on Wednesday of Columbia University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, whose testimony before the GOP-led committee in the spring brought concerns over the university’s tacit support for Hamas to the forefront.
“During Shafik’s presidency, a disturbing wave of antisemitic harassment, discrimination, and disorder engulfed Columbia university’s campus,” Foxx said in a press release issued by the committee.
“Jewish students and faculty have been mocked, harassed, and assaulted simply for their identity,” she added. “Every student has the right to a safe learning environment. Period. Yet, flagrant violations of the law and the university rules went unpunished.”
Shafik resigned after a brief, tumultuous tenure that saw the head of the prestigious New York university face heavy scrutiny for her handling of protests and campus divisions over the Israel–Hamas war.
The Ivy League school in upper Manhattan was roiled this year by student demonstrations, culminating in scenes of police officers carrying zip ties and riot shields storming a building that had been occupied by pro-Palestinian protesters. Similar protests swept college campuses nationwide, with many leading to violent clashes with police and thousands of arrests.
It is unlikely that the protests were organic, with strong evidence suggesting that activists were being bankrolled by far-left organizations, including those linked to notorious billionaire oligarch George Soros.
Several Arab nations supporting Hamas’s fight against the Israelis may also have helped to fund the protests—as well as making sizeable donations to the universities themselves.
Shafik’s announcement also comes just days after the school confirmed that three deans had resigned, amid allegations that they exchanged disparaging texts during a campus discussion about Jewish life and anti-Semitism.
In a statement reacting to those resignations, Foxx praised the outcome while questioning the delayed reaction.
“About time. Actions have consequences, and Columbia should have fired all four of these deans months ago. Instead, the University continues to send mixed signals,” she wrote in a committee press release.
“… These administrators had a responsibility to ensure Jewish students are able to thrive safely on Columbia’s campus, and they failed miserably, showing contempt for the Jewish community and engaging in antisemitic tropes” Foxx added. “I hope that Columbia continues to sever ties with anyone who has been complicit in the antisemitism that’s overrun the campus since October 7.”
Shafik, who began the role in July last year, announced her resignation in an emailed letter to the university community just weeks before the start of classes on Sept. 3. The university on Monday began restricting campus access to people with Columbia IDs and registered guests, saying it wanted to curb “potential disruptions” as the new semester nears.
In her letter, Shafik heralded “progress in a number of important areas” but lamented that during her tenure it was “difficult to overcome divergent views across our community.”
“This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in the community,” she wrote. “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.”
Columbia’s Board of Trustees meanwhile announced that Katrina Armstrong, the CEO of Columbia University Irving Medical Center, will serve as interim president.
“Challenging times present both the opportunity and the responsibility for serious leadership to emerge from every group and individual within a community,” said Armstrong, who is also the executive vice president for the university’s Health and Biomedical Sciences. “As I step into this role, I am acutely aware of the trials the University has faced over the past year.”
According to Foxx, it was incumbent upon Armstrong—and whomever the board appoints afterward—to do more than deliver platitudes and sweet nothings.
“Columbia’s next leader must take bold action to address the pervasive antisemitism, support for terrorism, and contempt for the university’s rules that have been allowed to flourish on its campus,” said the GOP lawmaker, herself a former university instructor and college president.
During Shafik’s congressional testimony in mid-April, as pro-Palestinian protesters first set up tent encampments on Columbia’s campus, she denounced anti-Semitism but faced criticism for how she’d responded to faculty and students accused of bias.
The school sent in police to clear the tents the following day, only for the activists to return and inspire a wave of similar protests at campuses across the country, with protesters calling for schools to cut financial ties to Israel and the companies supporting the war.
As the protest rolled on for weeks, the school was thrust into the national spotlight. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., showed up to denounce the encampment, while Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came to support it.
Foxx accompanied Johnson on his visit, where she declared, “Columbia University is in a freefall” and warned Shafik that “the inmates are running the asylum” while denouncing the suspension of two Jewish students over a “made-up ‘chemical attack.’”
Eventually, talks between the school and the protesters came to a standstill, and as the school set a deadline for the activists to clear out, a group instead took over Hamilton Hall.
Even after the protests were cleared, Columbia decided to cancel its university-wide commencement ceremony, instead opting for a series of smaller, school-based ceremonies.
The campus was mostly quiet this summer, until news broke in June revealing the series of text messages exchanged by administrators while attending the May 31 panel discussion “Jewish Life on Campus: Past, Present and Future.”
Following the bombshell report from the Washington Free Beacon, Foxx issued a request to the university that it provide the text messages.
The officials were subsequently removed from their posts, with Shafik saying in a July 8 letter to the school community that the messages were unprofessional and “disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes.”
Many of Shafik’s critics on both sides of the debate were quick to cheer the end of her tenure, which is one of the shortest in school history.
Johnson said her resignation was “long overdue” and should serve as a cautionary example to other university administrators that “tolerating or protecting antisemites is unacceptable and will have consequences.”
The student group Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine wrote in a post on the social media platform X that Shafik “finally got the memo” after months of protests.
After months of chanting “Minouche Shafik you can’t hide” she finally got the memo. 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.
— Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (@ColumbiaSJP) August 15, 2024
The campus chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace wrote it will “not be placated by her removal as the university’s repression of the pro-Palestinian student movement continues.”
The students of Columbia will never forget the sheer violence unleashed upon us by Minouche Shafik, and we will not be placated by her removal as the university’s repression of the pro-Palestinian student movement continues. https://t.co/2KzgbzucA8
— BC/CU Jewish Voice for Peace (@JVPColumbia) August 15, 2024
Other prominent Ivy League leaders have stepped down in recent months, in large part due to their response to the volatile protests on campus.
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned in December after less than two years on the job amid pressure from donors and criticism over testimony at a congressional hearing where she was unable to say under repeated questioning that calls on campus for the genocide of Jews would violate the school’s conduct policy.
And in January, Harvard University President Claudine Gay resigned amid plagiarism accusations and similar criticism over her testimony before Congress.
Shafik said she will return to the United Kingdom to lead an effort by the foreign secretary’s office to review the government’s approach to international development.
“I am very pleased and appreciative that this will afford me the opportunity to return to work on fighting global poverty and promoting sustainable development, areas of lifelong interest to me,” she wrote.
Ironically, it comes at a precarious time for the U.K., where recent protests have broken out between working-class British citizens and Muslim immigrants following the brutal stabbings of three girls by a second-generation Rwandan transplant.
The Egyptian-born economist previously led the London School of Economics, but had made her mark largely outside academia with roles at the World Bank, the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of England.
At the time of Shafik’s appointment, Columbia Board of Trustees chair Jonathan Lavine had described her as a leader with an “unshakable confidence in the vital role institutions of higher education can and must play in solving the world’s most complex problems.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
