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The former television journalist and co-chair of the university’s board of trustees takes the helm at a time of significant peril for the institution.
March 29, 2025, 1:04 p.m. ET
On Capitol Hill last April, Claire Shipman, then a co-chair of Columbia University’s board of trustees, testified that she agreed there was a “moral crisis on our campus,” with students and faculty members acting in unacceptable ways that threatened Jewish and Israeli students.
“I can tell you plainly that I am not satisfied with where Columbia is at this moment,” she said at a hearing on campus antisemitism.
Now, she will have even more of an opportunity to address the situation. On Friday, Ms. Shipman, 62, an author and former television journalist, was elevated to become Columbia’s interim president, remaining in the role until a search for a permanent president is completed.
Ms. Shipman is taking the helm at a time of significant peril for the 271-year-old institution. The Trump administration has cut $400 million in federal research grants to Columbia, mostly in the health sciences, because of what it described as the school’s failure to protect Jewish students from harassment. To get the money back, the White House is demanding a series of reforms from Columbia, including a ban on masks that are intended to conceal identity, stricter rules about where and when protests can take place and outside oversight of the university’s Middle Eastern studies department.
Federal officers from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency have detained or attempted to detain several current or former Columbia students in recent weeks, including Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the school’s pro-Palestinian movement who holds a green card and is married to a U.S. citizen.
Katrina Armstrong, who stepped down as the university’s interim president on Friday, had pledged to meet the Trump administration’s conditions for a return of the funding. But the written promises Columbia made, while far-reaching, did not go as far as the government’s demands, and Dr. Armstrong faced criticism last week for appearing to downplay the changes at a faculty meeting, a transcript of which was leaked to the news media.
