The Columbia Jewish Alumni Association is calling on Claire Shipman, the university’s interim president, to resign, following the release of messages in which she appeared to downplay concerns about antisemitism and sought to remove a Jewish board member.
Ari Shrage, co-founder of the Columbia Jewish Alumni Association, told JNS that Interim President Shipman’s statements are extremely offensive and unacceptable.
“They cannot be explained by ‘taken out of context,’” he said. “Her lack of empathy and disregard for a board member concerned with student safety, as well as deliberate isolation and a suspicion of withholding of information from a board member, make her not fit to serve in the office of president of Columbia University.”
“We believe that the interim president should step down immediately,” he said.
In October 2023, Shipman wrote to Minouche Shafik, at the time the president of Columbia, that “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, but it’s deep, and it is quite threatening.”
On Tuesday, Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) demanded answers from Shipman regarding the messages.
Stefanik and Walberg also point to January 2024 messages from Shipman in which she sought to appoint “somebody from the Middle East or who is Arab” to Columbia’s board. She did so even as she sought to remove from the board Shoshana Shendelman, who is Jewish and who the lawmakers describe as “one of the board’s most outspoken Jewish advocates” since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.