Columbia University President Minouche Shafik has resigned amid ongoing debates about free speech following campus protests related to the war in Gaza. Her resignation comes just a year after she took office at the prestigious Ivy League institution in New York City and shortly before the autumn semester is set to begin.
Shafik is now the third president of an Ivy League university to step down over her response to protests regarding the Gaza conflict. In April, she authorized New York Police Department officers to enter the campus, a controversial decision that resulted in the arrest of around 100 students occupying a university building.
This marked the first instance of mass arrests at Columbia since the Vietnam War protests over 50 years ago and sparked further protests at numerous colleges across the United States and Canada.
In an email to students and faculty on Wednesday, Shafik acknowledged that she had presided over a “period of turmoil” characterized by conflicting views within the university community.
“This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community.”
Katrina Armstrong, chief executive officer of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, will serve as the interim president.
“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,” Ms Shafik wrote in her letter.
“I have tried to navigate a path that upholds academic principles and treats everyone with fairness and compassion,” she continued.
“It has been distressing – for the community, for me as president and on a personal level – to find myself, colleagues, and students the subject of threats and abuse.”
Students’ frustration over Israel’s military actions against Hamas has prompted difficult questions for university leaders, who are grappling with heated campus discussions surrounding the situation in the Middle East. Since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 and Israel’s subsequent incursion into Gaza, US college campuses have become a focal point for protests related to the conflict.
Leaders from Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. The presidents of Harvard and UPenn eventually resigned amid backlash regarding their management of campus protests and their congressional testimony, particularly their hesitance to state that calls for the deaths of Jews could violate university policies.
In April, Shafik defended Columbia’s efforts to address antisemitism before Congress, highlighting an increase in such hate on campus and the institution’s commitment to protecting its students.
Shafik, an esteemed Egyptian-born economist with previous roles at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Bank of England, also served as president of the London School of Economics.
She was reportedly on the shortlist for the governor of the Bank of England in 2019 and received a damehood in 2015.
In her letter, she mentioned being asked by the UK Foreign Secretary to lead a review of the government’s approach to international development, allowing her to return to the House of Lords and engage with the UK government’s legislative agenda.
Her resignation follows that of three deans at Columbia University, who stepped down last week after text messages revealed they used “antisemitic tropes” while discussing Jewish students. These exchanges were first published by the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce in early July.
Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, chairwoman of the committee, commended the decision of the three administrators to resign.
“About time. Actions have consequences,” she said in a statement last Thursday, adding that the decision should have been made “months ago”.
“Instead, the University continues to send mixed signals,” she continued, adding that the administration is allowing a dean who has not resigned to “slide under the radar with no real consequences”.
Universities around the US are preparing for the academic year to begin in the next several weeks, as the conflict in Gaza continues.
On Tuesday, a judge in California ruled that UCLA – which saw violent protests break out on campus in May – must prevent protesters from blocking Jewish students from campus facilities.
Judge Mark Scarsi ruled that protesters had “established checkpoints and required passers-by to wear a specific wristband to cross them”, and blocking “people who supported the existence of the state of Israel”.
“Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” Judge Scarsi wrote in the order. “This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating.”
The university has attributed the checkpoints to outside agitators and has expressed its objection to the ruling. On October 7, Hamas-led gunmen killed approximately 1,200 people in an attack on Israel and took 251 hostages back to Gaza. This assault prompted a significant Israeli military response against Gaza, leading to the ongoing conflict. According to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, at least 39,897 Palestinians have been killed during the Israeli campaign.
