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Wednesday, July 2, 2025
Acting Columbia U. president apologizes for calling to remove Jewish board member after Oct. 7
Luke Tress is The Times of Israel's New York correspondent.
Acting Columbia University President Claire Shipman apologizes for calling to remove a Jewish university board member amid campus turmoil following the October 2023 invasion of Israel.
The Congressional Committee on Education and the Workforce exposed texts from Shipman yesterday.
The committee, which has been investigating antisemitism at Columbia, sent a letter to Shipman requesting “clarity regarding several messages you sent that appear to downplay and even mock the pervasive culture of antisemitism on Columbia’s campus.”
On October 30, 2023, Shipman wrote to then-university president Minouche Shafik, saying, “People are really frustrated and scared about antisemitism on our campus and they feel somehow betrayed by it. Which is not necessarily a rational feeling.”
On January 17, 2024, Shipman said, “We need to get somebody from the Middle East or who is Arab on our board,” according to texts obtained by the House committee. The committee said the texts raised concerns about the university’s compliance with non-discrimination rules, and its approach toward antisemitism.
Shipman also spoke out against Shoshana Shendelman, a Jewish member of Columbia’s board of trustees who had spoken out against the harassment of Jewish students.
In January 2024, Shipman said, “I just don’t think she should be on the board” and called Shendelman “extraordinarily unhelpful.” In April 2024, Shipman agreed with a colleague who suggested Shendelman was a “mole” and a “fox in the henhouse.”
“I am tired of her,” Shipman said.
Shipman was on the university’s board of trustees at the time.
“These exchanges raise the question of why you appeared to be in favor of removing one of the board’s most outspoken Jewish advocates at a time when Columbia students were facing a shocking level of fear and hostility,” leaders of the committee said in the letter to Shipman.
In a letter sent to some faculty members this afternoon, Shipman apologizes.
“The things I said in a moment of frustration and stress were wrong. They do not reflect how I feel. I have apologized directly to the person named in my texts, and I am apologizing now to you,” Shipman says, according to a copy of the email shared with The Times of Israel.
“It was a moment of immense pressure, over a year and a half ago, as we navigated some deeply turbulent times. But that doesn’t change the fact that I made a mistake,” she says, adding that she maintains her “deep commitment to fighting antisemitism and protecting our Jewish students and faculty.”
Shafik resigned last year amid intense turmoil of antisemitism and anti-Israel activism on campus, and her replacement, Katrina Armstrong, stepped down in March. Shipman took the mantle, and had been seen as a more effective advocate for Jewish students than her predecessors.
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