Campus protests put Columbia president in crosshairs of critics on the left and right

Published Apr 24, 2024 at 3:17 p.m. ET

Modified Apr 24, 2024 at 8:19 p.m. ET

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Published Apr 24, 2024 at 3:17 p.m. ET

Modified Apr 24, 2024 at 8:19 p.m. ET

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Dozens of Columbia University professors who gathered at the school’s Morningside Heights campus on Monday chanted a simple message for their boss: “Resign, resign, resign.”

They were incensed that the university's President Minouche Shafik had called the NYPD four days earlier to clear out and arrest more than 100 demonstrators who erected a tent encampment on the campus’s main lawn. The protesters are calling for the university to divest from the state of Israel.

The faculty members said Shafik crossed a line by inviting police to disrupt what had been a largely peaceful demonstration.

But Shafik’s employees and students aren’t the only ones calling for her ouster. The day before she called the NYPD, Shafik testified before a congressional committee about antisemitism on college campuses. Nine Republican House members from New York also called for her to resign soon afterward.

Congressional Republicans had also demanded that the leaders of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania resign following their testimony to the same committee late last year. Only Shafik and MIT's president still have their jobs.

Until recently, Shafik, 61, had been able to avoid controversy by staying out of the spotlight. While the leaders of Harvard and UPenn stumbled on Capitol Hill, Shafik was in Dubai at an environmental conference.

But she now faces heat from both left-wing protesters, students and faculty members who say she shouldn’t have brought police in to crack down on protesters at the school, and right-wing politicians and activists who say she isn’t doing enough to combat antisemitic speech on Columbia’s campus.

“She has put herself in a position that almost nobody can defend her,” said Houman Harouni, an higher education expert at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “The board is still behind her, but the board is always behind their president until the weekend on which they decide to change their minds.”

Protesters at Columbia University are calling for the resignation of the school's president, Minouche Shafik, after she called in the NYPD to clear out demonstrators.

Shafik's stance on protesters has toughened in recent months. In February, the university rejected students’ demands that Columbia divest from any financial ties to Israel – though the issue continues to be at the center of demonstrations on campus. In March, Shafik signaled she was open to additional restrictions on protests, such as banning the use of megaphones and more aggressively trying to identify masked demonstrators.

The tent encampments returned to the campus shortly after they were cleared by the NYPD last week. Columbia officials said on Wednesday that they’re negotiating with the protesters, but only committed to continuing the talks for another 48 hours.

Meanwhile, more voices are joining the chorus of Shafik’s critics. The New York Times this week reported that members of Columbia’s senate, which comprises faculty, students and alumni, circulated a draft resolution calling for Shafik's censure, saying she made an “unprecedented assault on student rights” by calling in the NYPD to clear the campus’s lawn. The resolution stopped short of calling for her ouster.

“She has forfeited the privilege to lead this great university,” shouted history professor Christopher Brown at Monday’s protest. A crowd of onlookers, most of whom were Columbia students, erupted in cheers.

Pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University on April 22, 2024.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who met with Jewish students at Columbia on Wednesday, also called on Shafik to resign.

“This president Shafik has shown to be a very weak, inept leader,” Johnson said on the “Hugh Hewitt Show” ahead of his visit to the university. “They cannot even guarantee the safety of Jewish students. They’re expected to run from their lives and stay home from class.”

Columbia declined to comment on the growing calls for Shafik’s resignation. University spokesperson Samantha Slater said that “President Shafik is focused on de-escalating the rancor on Columbia’s campus.”

Late Wednesday, Columbia's Board of Trustees released a statement backing Shafik.

“The Columbia University Board of Trustees strongly supports President Shafik as she steers the university through this extraordinarily challenging time. During the search process for this role, President Shafik told us that she would always take a thoughtful approach to resolving conflict, balancing the disparate voices that make up a vibrant campus like Columbia’s, while taking a firm stance against hatred, harassment and discrimination. That's exactly what she's doing now," the Board of Trustees said.

"We are urgently working with her to help resolve the situation on campus and rebuild the bonds of our community; we encourage everyone who cares about Columbia to join us in that effort.”

Most of Shafik’s career has revolved around global finance and poverty — a far cry from Columbia’s academic community, where students, faculty and wealthy donors have competing political viewpoints.

During a roundtable hosted at Hunter College last month, Shafik spoke about fleeing Egypt as a child with her parents in the late 1960s, when the country was ruled by the authoritarian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who led the country in the Six-Day War against Israel. Shafik’s parents settled in Savannah, Georgia, where they started “from scratch,” she said. She received her doctorate in economics from Oxford University in 1989.

Both of Shafik’s parents were educators. She described her father as “a very difficult man” who was traumatized from the political upheaval in the Middle East.

Shafik recalled values her father ingrained in her from a very early age: “They can take everything away from you except your education.”

Her father’s insistence on the value of education, she said, translated to her work.

“I didn’t start off in academia. I spent 25 years working in international organizations and on policy issues,” Shafik said at the event. “What is that expression, ‘Running toward the bullets?’ I had a slight tendency to do that in my career which feels very prescient given the moment.”

Shafik’s professional career sent her all over the world. She worked in various roles for the World Bank before moving to the International Monetary Fund, the Bank of England and later as an undersecretary in the United Kingdom's Department for International Development.

Her first leading role in higher education was at the London School of Economics, where she was appointed president in 2016.

Shafik began her tenure as Columbia University's first female president last July.

Months later, Hamas militants' Oct. 7 attack on Israel sent shockwaves worldwide, sparking protests that have divided and disrupted college campuses throughout the United States. The demonstrations at Columbia this week prompted university officials to order a switch to hybrid learning for the remainder of the school year.

The protests have featured antisemitic episodes that went viral. Video shared last weekend of protesters at Columbia shouting comments like “Go back to Poland” at Jewish students drew condemnation from the White House, Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Those kinds of comments by protesters have for months been a hot topic among conservative Republicans. Harvard's former President Claudine Gay and UPenn's former President Liz Magill both resigned after their congressional appearances, where they declined to explicitly denounce remarks by some protesters on their campuses that called for the genocide of Jews.

Shafik didn’t make that mistake during her own congressional hearing last week. “Antisemitism has no place on our campus, and I am personally committed to doing everything I can to confront it directly,” she told lawmakers. She said she considered comments like “long live the Intifada” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” antisemitic.

But that didn’t satisfy her critics on the right, and her move to send in the NYPD to clear out protesters has made her a target of protesters on the left.

A pro-Israel protester unaffiliated with the university echoed calls for Shafik's resignation outside the Morningside Heights campus on Tuesday morning.

“She’s a disgrace and she should resign in disgrace,” said Josh Goodkin, who described himself as a Jewish and Israeli advocate. “The National Guard should be called in to remove every one of those tents on campus, to remove all the students, and any student who does not comply should be expelled.”

Harouni, the education expert, said Shafik’s position on the ongoing protests may isolate her. He speculated her decision to send in the NYPD was a response to pressure from House Republicans, who have their eyes on the school.

“What she’s trying to do is to constantly balance this constituency against that other constituency, and that’s a very delicate game,” he said. “All it takes is for one side to push you a little bit, for one misstep for you to go too far.”

Correction: This story has been updated to make clear the Columbia senate's draft resolution reportedly called for Shafik's censure but stopped short of a call for her resignation.

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Ramsey Khalifeh is a general assignment reporter on the NYC Accountability desk covering the city's most powerful institutions and the work they do (or don't). He was previously a summer intern on the Day-of desk and also worked at the Boston Globe's metro and copy desk. Got a tip? Email [email protected]

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