Columbia President Manoucher Shafik accomplish bottomward months afterwards protests over Israel-Hamas war absorbed campus

Columbia University Admiral Manoucher Shafik is dispatch bottomward months afterwards protests over the Israel-Hamas war absorbed the campus, Shafik appear in a letter beatific Wednesday to the Columbia community.

Shafik   an Egyptian-born economist and above baronial official at the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and Bank of England, and above admiral of the London School of Economics   has faced burden for her administration of Columbia campus encampments agitation the war amid Israel and Hamas.

Shafik in her letter cited advance during her administration but said it has “also been an Aeon of agitation area it has been difficult to affected aberrant angle beyond our community.”

“This Aeon has taken an ample assessment on my family, as it has for others in our community,” Shafik said in the letter. “Over the summer, I accept been able to reflect and accept assertively that my affective on at this point would best accredit Columbia to bisect the challenges ahead.”

Pressure was architecture for Shafik to footfall bottomward afterwards months of student-led demonstrations at the school’s New York campus that advance to colleges beyond the country. Shafik came beneath criticism afterwards acceding arrests on campus and for her affidavit to the House Education Committee over the university’s administration of antisemitism.

“I accept approved to cross an aisle that upholds bookish attempt and treats anybody with candor and compassion. It has been distressing for the community, for me as admiral and on a claimed level to acquisition myself, colleagues, and acceptance the accountable of threats and abuse,” Shafik said.

The Ivy League listed Katrina Armstrong as acting president, according to the university’s website. Armstrong, a Doctor of Medicine, has served as controlling carnality admiral for the bloom and biomedical sciences administration at Columbia and arch controlling administrator of the medical campus.

Shafik says she’ll be alive with Armstrong “to ensure an alike transition.”

“Even as tension, division, and politicization accept disrupted our campus over the aftermost year, our amount mission and ethics abide and will abide to adviser us in affair the challenges ahead,” Shafik’s letter said.

Armstrong said in a letter to the university association that she is “deeply honored” to activate her new role aloof 20 canicule afore the abatement division starts.

“As I footfall into this role, I am acutely acquainted of the trials the University has faced over the accomplished year. We should neither understate their significance, nor acquiesce them to ascertain who we are and what we will become,” Armstrong said. “The accustomed action and affiance of a new bookish year are abreast this year by the attendance of change and continuing concerns, but additionally by the immense befalling to attending forward, to accompany calm for the commendable mission we are actuality to serve, and to become our best selves alone and institutionally.”

The Columbia Lath of Trustees said in a letter that it has “regretfully” accustomed Shafik’s accommodation to footfall bottomward as admiral and accepted the contributions she has fabricated to the university community, alike during a “difficult year.” The lath went on to endorse Armstrong, adage her administration and acquaintance will advise the university with its challenges.

“We accept that Katrina is the appropriate baton for this moment. We are beholden to her for dispatch in, and we alarm on our association to abutment her,” the lath said.

Shafik is dispatch bottomward an anniversary afterwards the resignations of three Columbia University deans who were assuredly removed from their posts beforehand this summer afterwards the university’s admiral said they affianced in “very troubling” argument letters that “touched on antisemitic tropes.” The deans, Susan Chang-Kim, Cristen Kromm and Matthew Patashnick, were removed from ability in July afterwards their accomplishments during a May 31 console altercation about Jewish activity at an alumni event.

In her abutting role, Shafik will be alive with the UK’s Foreign Secretary “to armchair an analysis of the government’s access to all-embracing development and how to advance capability,” according to her letter.

Criticism over campus protests

Shafik came beneath criticism for her administration of protests on campus over the Israel-Hamas war. Leading up to the university-wide admission set to booty abode on May 15, Shafik enlisted an aggregation of bookish leaders to accommodate with assembly from the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on campus. However, they bootless to appear to a resolution that would aftereffect in acceptance abrogation the billet on university backyard area Columbia admission ceremonies commonly occurs, Shafik appear in an account on April 29. 

After the talks bankrupt down, acceptance as able-bodied as bodies detached with Columbia bankrupt into Hamilton Hall, a capital bookish architecture on campus, and barricaded themselves inside. That prompted Shafik to appeal the New York Police Department’s abetment on April 30 to abolish protesters that active the architecture in accession to the encampment.

In total, the NYPD said it arrested about 300 protesters that night at Columbia and adjoining City College. Shafik additionally requested the NYPD break on campus through at atomic May 17 “to advance adjustment and ensure encampments are not reestablished,” she said in her April 30 letter to the NYPD.

The “drastic escalation” at Hamilton Hall “pushed the University to the brink,” Shafik said in a May 1 letter.

students and alfresco activists breaking Hamilton Hall doors, mistreating our Public Safety admiral and aliment staff, and damaging acreage are acts of destruction, not political speech,” she said. “I apperceive I allege for abounding associates of our association in adage that this about-face of contest has abounding me with abysmal sadness. I am apologetic we accomplished this point.”

The arrests came about an anniversary afterwards Shafik initially accustomed the NYPD to arrest added than 100 protesters on a basic allegation of bent breach a day afterwards the billet was launched on April 17.

That day Shafik testified afore the House Apprenticeship Board over the university’s administration of antisemitism. Shafik told assembly she accursed several professors’ statements fabricated in abutment of Hamas’ October 7 attack, consistent in the battlefront of an atomic one professor, Mohamed Abdou, at the cessation of the semester.

Republican US Rep. Virginia Foxx, Apprenticeship and the Workforce Board chairwoman, said Columbia’s abutting baton “must booty adventurous activity to abode the common antisemitism, abutment for terrorism, and antipathy for the university’s rules that accept been accustomed to curl on its campus.”

“During Shafik’s presidency, an advancing beachcomber of antisemitic harassment, discrimination, and ataxia engulfed Columbia university’s campus. Jewish acceptance and adroitness accept been mocked, harassed, and assaulted artlessly for their identity,” Foxx said in a statement. “Every apprentice has the appropriate to a safe acquirement's environment. Period. Yet, arrant violations of the law and the university rules went unpunished.”

In an accomplishment to abstain the fates of two added Ivy League presidents at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, who accommodated afterwards their adverse December aldermanic audition on antisemitism, Shafik reportedly able for months for her testimony. She additionally told assembly that calls for the genocide of Jews breach the university’s cipher of conduct, which Harvard and UPenn’s above presidents did not.

However, several assemblies begin her responses bereft and apprenticed her on why added absolute and appropriate accomplishments weren’t taken adjoin advisers as able-bodied as acceptance who allegedly partook in acts of antisemitism.

Republican US Rep. Elise Stefanik, an affiliate of the board who had ahead alleged for Shafik’s removal, said “it was alone an amount of time” afore Shafik resigned.

“After declining to assure Jewish acceptance and negotiating with pro-Hamas terrorists, this affected abandonment is continued overdue,” Stefanik said in a statement. “We will abide to appeal moral clarity, accusation of antisemitism, aegis of Jewish acceptance and faculty, and stronger administration from American college apprenticeship institutions.”

Shafiq-authorized campus arrests drew admonishment from faculty

Shafiq’s accommodation to accredit arrests came beneath blaze from university adroitness who staged an exhibit in abutment of students’ rights to affably beef afterwards the aboriginal annular of arrests.

After the additional annular of arrests, Nadia L. Abu El-Haj, an assistant of anthropology at Columbia, criticized Shafik for allegedly not acceptance adroitness associates to footfall in and try to conciliate the bearings afore bringing badge into the campus.

Columbia University associates of the American Association of University Professors additionally drafted an admonishment motion alleging Shafik abandoned “the axiological requirements of bookish freedom” and launched an “unprecedented advance on students’ rights.”

People opposing the encampments, decidedly Jewish and pro-Israel acceptance and faculty, apprenticed the university to adjourn the encampments. In accomplishing so, they cited several instances area some protesters had alleged for abandon and concrete browbeating targeting Jewish and pro-Israel acceptance and faculty.

Ahead of Passover, a clergyman affiliated to the Ivy League academy apprenticed Jewish acceptance to leave campus and abide abroad for the blow of the semester. Shortly after, Shafik appear capital campus classes would be amalgam until the division ends.

The billet acceptance launched at Columbia bound sparked a movement at academy campuses beyond the country and beyond the globe.

Like Shafik, university presidents struggled to acquisition an antithesis amid attention students’ abandon to beef and ensuring the assurance of all students. Many accept said that student-run protests on campuses were predominantly peaceful and that alfresco agitators were fueling the unrest.

Nevertheless, several university presidents   including at New York University, Yale, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Southern California   accustomed the arrests both of acceptance and adroitness at the time.