Minouche Shafik has resigned from her position as president of Columbia University. No one is really unhappy about it.
Columbia President Minouche Shafik on April 17 at the hearing in Washington on allegations of anti-Semitism Photo: Ken Cedeno/reuters
Minouche Shafik served as president of Columbia University for thirteen months and thirteen days. This is the shortest term in the history of the elite university since 1801. On Wednesday evening, Shafik announced her resignation in an email to the university, effective immediately. What happened?
Minouche Shafik is the third of eight Ivy League presidents, following Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania and Claudine Gay of Harvard, to resign as a result of controversy over the war in Gaza. In her statement, Shafik writes of a “time of turmoil in which it was difficult to overcome differing views within our community.” This has had a significant impact on her family and many in the university community. After careful consideration, she decided to resign over the summer.
When Hamas massacred Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, and Israel attacked Gaza shortly thereafter, the new semester had only begun a few weeks. Suddenly, accusations rained down on Shafik from all sides.
Egyptian-born economist Shafik was the first woman to hold this top position since the university was founded in the 18th century. She had previously headed the London School of Economics and Political Science for six years.
Tents on the university campus
In mid-April, pro-Palestinian protests at New York’s Columbia University sparked national and international debates and led to a domino effect that also swept up German universities. Hundreds of students set up tents on the university campus and protested against Columbia’s business dealings and connections with Israeli institutions.
Columbia University has an endowment of more than 14 billion US dollars, which it invests profitably – including in arms companies and other companies that profited from the war in Gaza, or so the protesters claimed. At the same time, reports of anti-Semitic incidents at Columbia continued to emerge.
Shortly after it was set up, Shafik had police in riot gear clear the protest camp and arrest more than a hundred students, even though police said they posed no serious threat. A humanities faculty called this behavior an “unprecedented attack on student rights.” In May, some faculty members expressed their lack of confidence in the president, accusing her of violating student rights and principles of academic freedom.
The same day she cleared the protest camp, Shafik was required to answer allegations of anti-Semitism on campus in a four-hour Republican-led congressional hearing in Washington, DC. Major Jewish donors, such as billionaire Robert Kraft, had suspended their payments and were urging the university to do more to protect its Jewish students.
Academic independence
Greg Khalil, a lecturer with Palestinian roots, accused the university of failing in its responsibility as an educational institution – namely, of creating a platform for students where they can have difficult conversations and tolerate differences – in an interview with taz in April. Until October 7, no one wanted to talk about the Middle East conflict at all because the topic was considered “too controversial.” After the Hamas massacre, they were only willing to talk about anti-Semitism – without addressing human rights for all.
Shafik is not interested in the safety of her Jewish or Palestinian students, who also suffer from attacks. Instead of protection, the president is concerned with appeasing the university’s donors. This puts academic independence at stake.
Even after the protest camp was rebuilt a few days after the eviction, negotiations between the university and the students were unsuccessful. Shafik himself never showed up at the protest camp. When the protesters occupied Hamilton Hall, a university building, the police stormed the site again. The graduation ceremony was canceled.
“It was a hellish year, an impossible situation from the start,” said Jelani CobbDean of Columbia’s School of Journalism, the Washington Post after the announcement of Shafik’s resignation. The president herself had spoken of the “central challenge” of reconciling the right to freedom of expression with the right of Jewish students to an environment free of discrimination and harassment. However, the reactions to her resignation show how little she has succeeded in this balancing act.
“Any future president who ignores our student body’s demand for divestment will face the same fate as President Shafik,” the activist group Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine announced on X after Shafik’s resignation was announced.
Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanie, who led the hearing against Shafik and other university presidents, also welcomed the resignation and praised the congressional committee that had urged Shafik to resign.
Shafik said she already has a new job at the British Foreign Office, where she will be investigating the British government’s development policy approach. Doctor Katrina A. Armstrong will be Shafik’s interim successor. According to Dean Cobb, Armstrong is “respected and popular” in the university community.
The situation on the Columbia campus remains tense just before the start of the semester. Three deans had to resign just a few days ago because it was revealed that they had sent each other mocking messages with anti-Semitic undertones in May. Pro-Palestinian protesters announced that they would not let up with their demands. And the university introduced a new warning system to prepare for new unrest in the fall: it recently switched from “green” to “orange”. Columbia’s gates remain closed to outsiders.
