Columbia University President Minouche Shafik has resigned, just four months after campus protests erupted over the war in Gaza.
Ms. Shafik’s resignation comes only a year into her tenure at the private Ivy League university in New York City, and just weeks before the autumn semester is set to begin.
Ms. Shafik is now the third Ivy League university president to resign over the handling of Gaza war protests.
In April, she authorized New York Police Department officers to swarm the campus, leading to the controversial arrest of about 100 students who were occupying a university building.
This marked the first instance of mass arrests on Columbia’s campus since Vietnam War protests over five decades ago.
The move sparked additional protests at numerous colleges across the United States and Canada.
In an email to students and faculty on Wednesday, Ms. Shafik wrote that she has overseen 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,” she added.
Katrina Armstrong, CEO of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, will serve as interim president.
“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,” Ms Shafik wrote in her letter.
“I have tried to navigate a path that upholds academic principles and treats everyone with fairness and compassion,” she continued.
“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.”
Students’ anger over Israel’s actions in its conflict with Hamas has raised complex questions for university leaders, who are already grappling with contentious campus debates about the situation in the Middle East.
US college campuses have been hotspots for Gaza war protests since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, followed by Israel’s incursion into the Gaza Strip.
Leaders from Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
The presidents of Harvard and UPenn eventually resigned amid backlash over their handling of campus protests and congressional testimony, including their refusal to state that calling for the deaths of Jews could violate university policy.
In April, Ms. Shafik defended her institution’s efforts to combat antisemitism to Congress, stating that there had been a rise in such hatred on campus and that the college was working to protect students.
Ms. Shafik, a highly respected Egyptian-born economist, formerly worked for the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Bank of England. She also served as president of the London School of Economics and was awarded a damehood in 2015. She was previously considered a candidate for the Bank of England governor, according to the BBC in 2019.
In her letter, she mentioned being asked by the UK Foreign Secretary to lead a “review of the government’s approach to international development and how to improve capability.”
She wrote that the decision “enables me to return to the House of Lords and to reengage with the important legislative agenda put forth by the new UK government.”
Her resignation follows the resignation of three Columbia University deans last week, after text messages showed the group using “antisemitic tropes,” according to a statement by Ms. Shafik, while discussing Jewish students. These text exchanges were published by the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce in early July.
Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, the chairwoman of the congressional committee, praised the decision by the three administrators to resign.
“About time. Actions have consequences,” she said in a statement last Thursday, adding that the decision should have been made “months ago”.
“Instead, the University continues to send mixed signals,” she continued, adding that the administration is allowing a dean who has not resigned to “slide under the radar with no real consequences”.
Universities around the US are preparing for the academic year to begin in the next several weeks, as the conflict in Gaza continues.
On Tuesday, a judge in California ruled that UCLA – which saw violent protests break out on campus in May – must prevent protesters from blocking Jewish students from campus facilities.
Judge Mark Scarsi ruled that protesters had “established checkpoints and required passers-by to wear a specific wristband to cross them”, and blocking “people who supported the existence of the state of Israel”.
“Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” Judge Scarsi wrote in the order. “This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating.”
The university has blamed outside agitators for the checkpoints and said it objected to the ruling.
Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people in an attack on Israel on 7 October, taking 251 others back to Gaza as hostages.
That attack triggered a massive Israeli military offensive against Gaza and the current war.
At least 39,897 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli campaign, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.