Columbia University’s acting president, Claire Shipman, apologized on Wednesday after the House Committee on Education and Workforce revealed that she had called for the dismissal of a Jewish board member, Jewish Insider reported.
In a private email to members of the Columbia community, Shipman said she had apologized to the board member, Shoshana Shendelman, whom the House education panel called “one of the board’s most outspoken Jewish advocates” on campus since Oct. 7, 2023.
“The things I said in a moment of frustration and stress were wrong,” Shipman wrote on Wednesday. “They do not reflect how I feel.”
“I should not have written those things, and I am sorry,” she stated. “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.”
In 2024 messages, Shipman said of Shendelman, “I just don’t think she should be on the board,” and agreed with another board member that Shendelman was a “mole” and a “fox in the henhouse” and that Shipman was “so, so tired” of Shendelman’s board membership.
Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) released the 2023 and 2024 messages from Shipman, written when the latter was co-chair of Columbia’s Board of Trustees, in a letter on Tuesday to her over concerns that Columbia continues to be in violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. (Walberg is chair of the House education panel.)
In addition to the messages about removing Shendelman, Shipman called for the appointment of an Arab or Middle Eastern board member and described the congressional investigations into Jew-hatred on college campuses as “Capitol Hill nonsense.” (JNS sought comment from the university.)
A spokesperson for Columbia told JNS on Tuesday that the messages “are now being published out of context and reflect a particularly difficult moment in time for the university.”
Shipman also blamed the media for taking her words out of context in her apology email on Wednesday.
“While the conclusions drawn in headlines are certainly off-base and misleading, one thing I hope salacious headlines will not obscure: My deep commitment to fighting antisemitism and protecting our Jewish students and faculty,” Shipman wrote.
Ari Shrage, co-founder of the Columbia Jewish Alumni Association, told JNS on Wednesday that Shipman’s messages “cannot be explained by ‘taken out of context.’”
“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,” Shrage said.
“We believe that the interim president should step down immediately,” he said.
