Columbia University’s president has resigned over her handling of antisemitism, following Penn’s Liz Magill
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned in December and Harvard President Claudine Gay in January.
Columbia University President Minouche Shafik resigned Wednesday, following mounting concerns over her handling of antisemitic complaints on campus and the recent resignation of three deans who were forced out of their positions over text messages that Shafik said “touched on antisemitic tropes.”
Shafik, an economist and former president of the London School of Economics who led Columbia for just over a year, is the third Ivy League president to resign in the wake of unrest over antisemitism.
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned in December after bipartisan criticism of her congressional testimony on the university’s policies in dealing with antisemitism. Harvard President Claudine Gay who testified on the same panel, resigned in January. All three presidents were on the job less than two years.
» READ MORE: Penn president Liz Magill has resigned following backlash over her testimony about antisemitism
In her resignation letter to the Columbia community, Shafik cited “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,” Shafik 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.”
Katrina Armstrong, CEO of Columbia University Irving Medical Center, will step in as interim president, the university said. She also is executive vice president for Health and Biomedical Sciences and dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine and the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
When Magill stepped down at Penn, J. Larry Jameson, executive vice president of the University of Pennsylvania’s health system and its medical school dean, stepped in as interim president. Penn announced in June that he would remain interim through the 2026 academic year.
Shafik’s resignation comes less than three weeks before the start of Columbia’s fall semester and as other colleges locally and nationally prepare for the return of the students and expected protests over the Israel-Hamas war in the Middle East.
Shafik’s departure also signals the high political stakes surrounding the contentious debate in the United States where the nation’s role in the overseas conflict has emerged as a top issue in the 2024 election.
Pro-Palestinian encampments at Columbia’s New York campus last spring kicked off a slew of similar tent protests at campuses nationally, including at Penn, Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Drexel, and Rutgers. In some cases, including Penn, universities called in police to disband the encampments and students were arrested. At Columbia, students and other protesters barricaded themselves in an academic building, prompting Shafik to call in police for which she was criticized. Several hundred were arrested.
She later also faced criticism for her testimony before the same congressional committee where Magill and Gay appeared.
“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,” she wrote. “As President Lincoln said, ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand ‘—we must do all we can to resist the forces of polarization in our community.”
» READ MORE: Philly Police have cleared Penn’s Pro-Palestinian encampment and arrested 33 protesters
Three Columbia deans, Susan Chang-Kim, Cristen Kromm and Matthew Patashnick were removed from their posts in July after their texts during a discussion about Jewish life on campus were made public. The texts were first reported by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website, and then released by the congressional committee.