Columbia President Holds On—for Now—as Student Protests Spiral
Columbia University President Minouche Shafik is facing pressure from a host of constituents as student protesters continue to disrupt campus life, but at least for the moment, she retains the support of the university’s board.
Shafik communicates with board members several times a day, according to people familiar with the board. Some board members say she’s doing the best she can under difficult circumstances, which includes balancing the competing demands of the board, faculty, alumni, students and others.
“A good leader knows when to push, when to pull back, when to pause and when to pivot,” said Hitendra Wadhwa, a Columbia business school professor who has consulted with the board and is familiar with their thinking. “I see Minouche doing all four of those in a very thoughtful way.”
Still, the situation at Columbia and for Shafik remains delicate, fluid and volatile.
Discontent on campus escalated to one of its more combustible points Monday evening when pro-Palestinian protesters broke into and occupied an administration building. The maneuver followed several weeks of protests on the campus of the Manhattan school, including the establishment of an encampment that has taken over a swath of the Columbia quad.
A group of alumni Tuesday updated a letter criticizing Shafik for her failure to act more aggressively and urging her to respond with more vigor.
“Anything less than the full enforcement of laws and policies signals a surrender of Columbia’s fundamental identity,” the letter said. “We urge steadfast leadership to firmly reiterate that such violence, hatred, and lawlessness have no place in our revered community.”
Expressions of confidence at one moment don’t equate to indefinite support however.
The boards at both Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania initially backed their respective presidents last winter following widely criticized congressional testimony. But after a period of weeks, that support eroded, and both presidents—Harvard’s Claudine Gay and Penn’s Liz Magill—were forced to resign.
As of Tuesday, the Columbia board appeared more concerned with de-escalating the situation on campus than with Shafik’s long-term fate, according to a person familiar with the board’s thinking.
At Columbia, divisions among board members have existed in recent weeks over how the school should move forward with the protesters, as commencement and the end of the school year are only weeks away. The school has already moved classes online.
One camp has favored taking a heavier hand and acting more decisively, according to several people familiar with the board’s thinking. The other favors a strategy of negotiation, de-escalation and letting the air slowly out of a pressure-filled situation.
Shafik has been criticized by all sides in recent weeks. Pro-Palestinian protesters have repeatedly accused her of trampling on their free-speech rights and of failing to negotiate in good faith.
Some Jewish students, meanwhile, have complained that by not cracking down on protests, the administration was effectively fostering an antisemitic and hostile environment.
Jacob Schmeltz, a Columbia senior and vice president of the Jewish on Campus Student Union, met with Shafik in the fall and relayed examples of violent and antisemitic behavior.
Schmeltz says that although Shafik listened intently in the meeting, he doesn’t think she followed up on her assurances that the school would address the students’ concerns.
“We’ve seen it again that things are continuing to escalate and escalate and escalate,” he said. “There has been more talk than action.”
In recent days, Shafik has taken several more aggressive steps. On Tuesday, after the letter from alumni circulated, Shafik responded to the students who had barricaded themselves inside Hamilton Hall a few hours later with an ultimatum: Leave, or face expulsion.
The threat was the latest gambit in a cat-and-mouse game between students and Shafik that began after she testified before Congress nearly two weeks ago.
During her testimony, she seemingly alienated some faculty when she discussed limits on acceptable classroom speech by faculty. Some professors called on her to step down.
The next day, demonstrators set up a tent encampment on the school’s main lawn. Shafik brought in police who arrested more than 100 students and protesters. That prompted more calls for her resignation from students complaining she had trampled on their free-speech rights.
When students reconfigured the encampment and protests fired back up, advocates for Jewish students, who have been harassed and denigrated by demonstrators, demanded she do more.
Board members, however, say that Shafik has spent a lot of time engaged in a sort of shuttle diplomacy, moving between angry groups of faculty, students and alumni.
Shafik was hired in part for her experience dealing with difficult situations, said a person close to the board. The board considered her ability to manage conflict and turmoil at the Bank of England and the London School of Economics, as well as the International Monetary Fund.
Her ability to thread the needle between different interest groups made her an attractive candidate among Columbia’s board, which even before Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, recognized their school was also divided.
Just before the attack, the board brought in Wadhwa to build cohesiveness among the members.
In a note on Friday circulated among trustee members, Wadhwa wrote that just because calls for Shafik to resign might be heard around campus, it “doesn’t mean that it is the wrong thing for this leader to be in power.”
“There will be periods where a virtuous leader may be paving the right path, but may be quite unpopular,” wrote Wadhwa. “This can especially be the case when the community is highly divided, and where the leader is seeking to temper people’s emotions and create a balance that will prevent the conflict from exploding.”
Cara Lombardo contributed to this article.
Write to Douglas Belkin at [email protected] and Peter Rudegeair at [email protected]