Columbia president resigns after year roiled by anti-Israel mayhem

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik announced her resignation Wednesday following a turbulent inaugural year, her brief tenure marred by widespread criticism over her handling of the anti-Israel protests that rocked the Manhattan campus.

Her resignation takes effect immediately.

Named as interim president was Katrina Armstrong, a physician who heads the university’s health and biomedical sciences campus and serves as chief executive officer of the medical center.

Ms. Shafik, 62, said it was “an honor and a privilege to lead this incredible institution,” but acknowledged that she has struggled to bridge the “divergent views” on campus.

“However, it has also been a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community,” she said in her resignation statement. “This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community.”

Ms. Shafik, who assumed the presidency in July 2023, becomes the fifth Ivy League president to step down in the last year, and the third whose departure has been linked to the fallout from the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israelis and other civilians.

The massacre prompted Israel to declare war and spurred widespread pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. campuses.

Harvard President Claudine Gay stepped down in January, shortly after the resignation of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill.

The two women participated in a disastrous Dec. 5 House committee hearing at which they said that whether calls for the genocide of Jews violate school policy on hate speech and harassment would depend on the context.

Ms. Shafik avoided such pitfalls at her April appearance before the House Education and the Workforce Committee, but she still faced calls from some Republicans to resign over her handling of rising campus antisemitism.

She came under fire on the right for allowing a vast anti-Israel encampment to take root on campus, and then on the left for bringing in the New York Police Department in April to round up protesters who had barricaded Hamilton Hall.

“I have tried to navigate a path that upholds academic principles and treats everyone with fairness and compassion,” she said in her statement. “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.”

Rep. Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Republican and education panel chair, said that “a disturbing wave of antisemitic harassment, discrimination, and disorder engulfed Columbia University’s campus” during Ms. Shafik’s presidency.

“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,” she said.

Ms. Shafik said Wednesday that over the summer “I have been able to reflect and have decided that moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead. I am making this announcement now so that new leadership can be in place before the new term begins.”

Her resignation comes just weeks before the start of the fall term on Sept. 3, a date circled in red by university administrators as they brace for whether the 2024-25 academic year will see another round of anti-Israel mayhem when students return to campus.

Ms. Shafik, a baroness and member of the British House of Lords, said she has accepted a position with the U.K. Foreign Secretary to “chair a review of 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 said. “It also enables me to return to the House of Lords to reengage with the important legislative agenda put forth by the new UK government.”

Ms. Armstrong said she was “deeply honored” to be selected as interim president while acknowledging the challenges.

“As I step into this role, I am acutely aware of the trials the University has faced over the past year,” she said. “We should neither understate their significance, nor allow them to define who we are and what we will become.”