June 26, 2025
By Douglas Belkin
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) called for Columbia University’s president to step down after the release of electronic messages in which the president criticized a Jewish member of the university board of trustees and appeared to diminish concerns about antisemitism on campus.
Stefanik tweeted out a one-word message above a picture of Claire Shipman, the school’s acting president: “Resign.”
Earlier Wednesday, Shipman wrote a letter to members of the school community apologizing for the messages.
“The things I said in a moment of frustration and stress were wrong. They do not reflect how I feel,” she wrote. “I have apologized directly to the person named in my texts, and I am apologizing now to you.”
The electronic messages—from 2023-24, while Shipman was a board member rather than the acting president—were included in a report by a congressional committee investigating antisemitism on college campuses and released by Stefanik, who co-chairs the committee.
Shipman’s letter of apology was sent to about a dozen friends, faculty donors, alumni and advisers, according to a person with knowledge of the letter who said she didn’t want texts from years ago to distract from the work at hand.
Ari Shrage, founder of the Columbia Jewish Alumni Association, called Shipman’s comments “extremely offensive and unacceptable,” and said she “should step down immediately.”
In 2024, Stefanik took credit for the resignation of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill and Harvard President Claudine Gay after they testified in front of Stefanik’s House Committee. “Two down,” Stefanik tweeted at the time.
Shipman’s apology comes at a critical moment for Columbia, which is negotiating with the Trump administration over the future of its federal funding and autonomy. In March the administration canceled $400 million in federal funds over concerns about how the university handled campus antisemitism.
The Trump administration has presented Columbia with a proposal for a consent decree, a form of federal oversight that would give a judge responsibility for ensuring Columbia complies with the agreement, according to people familiar with the matter.
Two Columbia presidents have resigned in the past year in connection with student protests that disrupted campus after the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and subsequent war in Gaza. Shipman was co-chair of the board of trustees when Katrina Armstrong resigned in March and she took over as acting president.
In one string of messages Shipman criticized Shoshana Shendelman, an outspoken Jewish trustee, and said she should not be on the board. In a 2023 exchange, the vice chair of the board asked Shipman: “Do you believe that [Shendelman] is a mole?” Shipman said she believed she was and added that she was “so, so tired” of her.
Shendelman didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In an earlier message, Shipman wrote that the board needed an Arab trustee: “We need to get somebody from the middle east [sic] or who is Arab on our board. Quickly I think. Somehow.”
-Read the story in the Wall Street Journal HERE.
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