Armstrong, Katrina A

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    New Columbia President Attacked by Stefanik Over 2023 Text Message

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    Elise Stefanik, a prominent Republican, questioned Claire Shipman’s commitment to protecting Jewish students. Ms. Shipman pledged “to build on the significant progress we’ve made.”Claire Shipman is only days into her job as acting president of Columbia University but is already being targeted by a prominent House Republican who questions her commitment to fighting antisemitism on campus.Ms. Shipman, in a private text message in December 2023 to Nemat Shafik, who was then Columbia’s president, referred to congressional hearings into campus antisemitism as “capital hill nonsense,” according to a transcript of the exchange released by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce as part of an investigative report last year.The comment is coming back to haunt Ms. Shipman. Representative Elise Stefanik, who is remaining in the House after President Trump withdrew her nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, seized on the remark during a television interview Sunday, predicting that Ms. Shipman will not last long in her new position.“It’s already come out that she has criticized and belittled the House investigation and the accountability measures and has failed to protect Jewish students,” Ms. Stefanik said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”“It’s untenable for her to be in this position, and I think it is only going to be a matter of weeks before she’s forced to step down as well,” she added.On X, Ms. Stefanik, whose pointed questioning of Ivy League presidents about antisemitism during the committee hearings sparked the departures of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, gave other details.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Columbia University’s Concessions to Trump Seen as a Watershed

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      Threatened with losing $400 million in federal funding, the university agreed to overhaul its protest policies and security practices.Many professors saw it as surrender, a reward to the Trump administration’s heavy hand. Conservative critics of academia celebrated it as an overdue, righteous reset by an Ivy League university.Columbia University’s concession on Friday to a roster of government demands as it sought to restore about $400 million in federal funding is being widely viewed as a watershed in Washington’s relationships with the nation’s colleges.By design, the consequences will be felt immediately on Columbia’s campus, where, for example, some security personnel will soon have arrest powers and an academic department that had drawn conservative scrutiny is expected to face stringent oversight. But they also stand to shape colleges far from Manhattan. “Columbia is folding and the other universities will follow suit,” Christopher Rufo, an activist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, wrote on social media after the university’s announcement on Friday.“They must restore the pursuit of truth, rather than ideological activism, as their highest mission,” said Mr. Rufo, who is close to the Trump administration and has helped make battles against diversity and equity into a conservative rallying cry. He added: “This is only the beginning.”The end is not clear. Columbia’s moves on Friday — revealed in a letter to the campus from the interim president, Dr. Katrina A. Armstrong — were essentially an opening bid in negotiations with the federal government to let the $400 million flow again. But the Trump administration has not publicly said what other concessions it might seek from Columbia or the dozens of other universities, from Hawaii to Harvard, that it has started to scrutinize since taking power on Jan. 20.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More