Columbia University president Minouche Shafik in hot water for handling of pro-Palestinian protests

Shortly after the Israel-Hamas war entered its six month, pro-Palestinian students at Columbia University established an on-campus encampment on April 17 of approximately 50 tents, called the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, to put pressure on the elite Ivy League university to cut ties with Israeli academic institutions and divest from Israel.

The encampment was forcibly dismantled the following day when Shafik called on the New York City Police Department to intervene, resulting in the arrests of more than 100 protesters on suspicion of criminal trespassing. Columbia also suspended students participating in the protest encampment. After these mass arrests, demonstrators quickly regrouped and other students across the United States started organising their own sit-ins, including at universities in Los Angeles, Boston and Austin, Texas.

Shafik's decision to call in police enforcement earned the ire of several politicians, including Democratic Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who said on X that “calling in police enforcement on nonviolent demonstrations of young students on campus is an escalatory, reckless, and dangerous act”.

“It represents a heinous failure of leadership that puts people’s lives at risk," she said. "I condemn it in the strongest possible terms”.

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Comparisons have also been made between Shafik and former Columbia president Grayson Kirk, who in 1968 set 1,000 police officers in riot gear on students protesting the Vietnam War.

“Columbia itself has its own traditions and memories of bringing police on campus,” James Finkelstein, a professor emeritus of public policy at George Mason University, told CNN. “You have a historically activist faculty and student body.”

Shafik’s decision to call in the NYPD on the student protesters “suggests to me being very insensitive to the history of the institution,” Finklestein added. 

While Columbia’s Board of Trustees continues to back Shafik, saying it “strongly supports” her as she “steers the university through this extraordinarily challenging time”, the university president is being attacked on all fronts. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has called for Shafik’s resignation if she failed to "immediately bring order to this chaos,” he said during a press conference at Columbia on Wednesday.

Many Columbia students also want Shafik to resign.

“I can’t think of anybody that is super pro-Minouche Shafik right now,” Jared Kennel, a student who has joined the Columbia sit-in protest as a member of the Columbia University Jews for Ceasefire society and the campus chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, told the Washington Post. 

“There are a lot of students that want her to step down, on both sides, for different reasons.”

Christopher Brown, a professor of history at Columbia, echoed Kennel’s sentiments.

“She has forfeited the privilege to lead one of the world’s great research universities, by not standing up for it,” he said.

At least two prominent donors say they have paused funding to the university until they feel it has taken adequate action to prevent anti-Semitism on campus. These moves come as the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce posted on X Monday that Shafik must “order law enforcement to clear out the unlawful encampment of anti-Semitic protesters, expel the students involved and terminate the Columbia faculty involved”. 

The ‘perfect candidate’

Touted as the “perfect candidate” by the chair of Columbia’s Board of Trustees when she was announced as the university's 20th president in July 2023, Shafik, 61, was the first woman to take on the prestigious role. 

Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Shafik and her family left the country when she was just four years old during the political and economic upheaval of the mid-1960s. They quickly settled in the southern US state of Georgia, before moving on to Miami and North Carolina. Shafik graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with a major in economics and politics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1983. She then earned a Masters of Science in economics from the London School of Economics in 1986 and later a Doctorate of Philosophy in economics from the University of Oxford in 1989.

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After completing her education, Shafik began her professional career at the World Bank, rising through the ranks to become the bank’s youngest-ever vice president. Shafik also worked at the International Monetary Fund, during which time she faced both the European debt crisis and the Arab Spring. During her stint at the Bank of England, she was responsible for the contingency planning around the Brexit referendum and fought misconduct in financial markets. Prior to serving as president of Columbia, she was president and vice chancellor at the London School of Economics. 

Rather than a hindrance, her financial background proved to be an asset in determining her future role as president of Columbia. Prior to her appointment – she was chosen among 600 candidates – Columbia Board of Trustees chair Jonathan Lavine described her as a leader who understood “the academy and the world beyond it”.

“What set Minouche apart as a candidate,” Lavine said in a statement, “is her unshakable confidence in the vital role institutions of higher education can and must play in solving the world’s most complex problems”. 

Calls for resignation

However, these supposed leadership skills and aptitude for addressing international issues don't seem to be helping her as she navigates the ongoing crisis at Columbia. Shafik was unable to testify in December as part of the US House's investigation into anti-Semitism at top universities due to a scheduling conflict, according to university spokesperson Samantha Slater. Shortly after, the presidents of University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, who strongly advocated the importance of allowing freedom of speech on university campuses during their congressional hearings, resigned from their positions in December and January respectively.

Following her eventual congressional appearance on April 17, Columbia’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a motion of censure against her. Although the AAUP have not called for her resignation, they do accuse Shafik of not respecting students’ rights to free speech and peaceful assembly. Calls for Shafik’s resignation, despite her condemnation of anti-Semitism during the hearing, have gained traction across party lines.

Republicans in New York’s delegation to the US House wrote a letter on Monday urging Shafik to resign, saying she was failing to ensure a safe learning environment as “anarchy has engulfed the campus”. John Fetterman, the Democratic Senator for Pennsylvania, echoed these sentiments on Monday, likening the sit-in protests at Columbia to the 2017 far-right rallies in Charlottesville. 

Amid the growing tensions on campus, Shafik said on Monday that classes would be held remotely in an attempt to “deescalate the rancour”. Shafik’s office also issued a statement late Thursday evening saying that it would drop the midnight deadline to dismantle the encampment made up of around 200 students.

"The talks have shown progress and are continuing as planned," the statement said. "We have our demands; they have theirs.”

The statement also denied that New York City police had been invited onto the campus to forcibly dismantle the sit-in protest.

"This rumour is false," the statement said.