UK’s PM appoints ex-Columbia University president, criticized for response to anti-Israel protests, as chief economic adviser

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer appoints Minouche Shafik, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England and the ex-president of Columbia University, as his chief economic adviser.

Shafik resigned last year as Columbia University president after the New York campus became an epicenter of unrest following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.

Her resignation came after sustained criticism of how she handled pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protests that convulsed the Ivy League school for months following October 7.

Shafik was the Bank of England’s deputy governor for markets and banking between August 2014 and February 2017, before leaving midway through her term to become vice chancellor of the London School of Economics.

In 2023, she became president of New York’s Columbia University, but quit after little more than a year when the university’s handling of months of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel student protests drew criticism from both sides.

Earlier in her career, Shafik was the top civil servant in Britain’s foreign aid ministry and subsequently deputy managing director at the International Monetary Fund, where she oversaw the IMF’s work in Europe and the Middle East during the euro zone debt crisis and the Arab Spring.

“This role and the additional expertise will support the government to go further and faster in driving economic growth and raising living standards for all,” Starmer’s office says.