'I'll remember her with contempt': Controversial Columbia president departs

Minouche Shafik, the 20th president of Columbia University, has stepped down after just one tumultuous year in office, a tenure heavily criticised for dealing a significant blow to free speech on campus.

“This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community,” Shafik wrote in her resignation letter on Tuesday.

Her brief term will be remembered not only for being one of the shortest and as the first female president of an Ivy League university but also for her mishandling of campus disputes, particularly those ignited by pro-Palestinian student protests.

Columbia University has a long-standing tradition of peaceful protests, where students have expressed themselves loudly, whether during the US wars in Vietnam and Iraq or against the South African apartheid regime.

“When you’re going to Columbia, you know you’re attending an institution with a revered place in the history of American protest,” said Mark Naison, a history professor at Fordham University, in an April interview.

Reflecting on his involvement in the 1968 demonstrations, Naison added, “Whenever there’s a movement, you can count on Columbia being at the forefront.”

However, throughout her one year at the office, Shafik insisted on disrupting this generational momentum, aiming to transform Columbia’s tradition into one of silence and censorship.

This is the legacy she leaves behind.

“I will remember her with contempt. Period,” Carl Hart, a psychiatry professor at Columbia, tells TRT World.

‘Cautious relief’

Earlier this year, Minouche Shafik’s controversial decision to bring in the New York police to dismantle anti-war student encampments—resulting in over a hundred arrests and multiple suspensions—escalated campus tensions and pushed Columbia University into the global spotlight.

For weeks, student-led peaceful demonstrations have been organised at major American universities as donors—many of whom are members of Zionist lobbies—pressured these institutions to maintain their ties with Israel and thwart the protests.

Columbia was among the first to resort to the drastic measure of calling law enforcement onto campus. The administration also moved all classes online until the end of the academic year.

Some faculty members were terminated for supporting the student protests, while others were labelled "terrorist supporters" and received threats for doing so.

Throughout these protests, the common rallying cry of student protesters was, “We will not stop. We will not rest,” as they sought to pressure the university administration to divest from companies complicit in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which has claimed at least 40,000 lives in the past ten months.

Patricia Dailey, a lecturer in Columbia's Department of English and Comparative Literature, also told TRT World during the student encampments that the escalation of the protests, especially with the involvement of police and outside agitators, made it “scary for all.”

“We have, within Columbia, ways of addressing anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and any and all hate speech. We do not need outside forces dictating how to discipline and govern- they are merely making the situation even more unsafe and stoking fear in order to create political instability,” she said.

This is why Shafik’s departure was described as a "cautious relief" by some members.

“Any academic leader who sells out sacred values like due process, academic freedom, and freedom of speech, among others, should be removed,” says psychiatry professor Hart.

He recalls Shafik’s April testimony before a Capitol Hill congressional committee on anti-Semitism allegations, describing it as “feckless” and “utterly cringeworthy.”

“The so-called leader of our community sold us out. She snitched on several colleagues and even agreed on the fly to revoke a tenured professor’s chairmanship—without his knowledge or due process—for engaging in nuanced discourse, which is an integral mission of universities.”

He also notes that Shafik's decision to “militarise the campus” by summoning the police put more members of the campus community—particularly Black and Brown individuals—at greater risk.

Cart doesn’t view Shafik’s departure as a significant win for the pro-Palestinian movement, stating, “One would have to be deluded if they believed the resignation of a two-bit university president 9,000 kilometres away was a win.”

However, he vows that even if the next administration behaves no differently than Shafik, he will do his part “to make sure the individual understands that real leaders protect and encourage free speech.”

“They don’t restrict it in response to political whims; nor do they take actions, like calling in the cops, knowing it poses an unconscionable threat to safety, particularly of its non-white community members.”

“My expectation is that we will live the principles we teach,” he says.