Bloomberg: Ivy League’s Chief Tormentor Returns, Lashes Out at Columbia
By Nacha Cattan
US Representative Elise Stefanik was supposed to be done with the Ivy League. Now she’s back, and already turning up the heat on Columbia University.
After she was tapped by President Donald Trump to become ambassador to the United Nations in November, Stefanik’s barrage of attacks against the richest colleges for doing too little to combat antisemitism began to abate. But once Trump pulled her nomination last week to protect the Republican majority in the House, she began to renew her verbal assault.
Over the weekend, the lawmaker from upstate New York fired off comments on X celebrating the resignation of Katrina Armstrong as Columbia’s interim president, and soon afterward condemned the school’s decision to appoint co-chair of its board of trustees Claire Shipman as acting president.
“Another untenable @Columbia President,” Stefanik wrote. “They will be onto yet another Columbia President very, very soon after this one.”
In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Stefanik predicted that it will be “only a matter of weeks” before Shipman is forced to step down.
“I’m going to continue to lead this effort in holding higher ed accountable, standing up to be good stewards of US taxpayer dollars, and combating the rot and the scourge of antisemitism in higher ed,” she said.
Stefanik gained national attention for her sharp questioning of university presidents during congressional hearings on antisemitism following the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. That helped lead to the resignations of the heads of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. Stefanik had slammed the previous president of Columbia, Minouche Shafik, for pro-Palestinian protests that included the occupation of one of its buildings. Shafik resigned abruptly in August.
Armstrong, appointed after Shafik, stepped down on Friday amid mounting criticism over her handling of demands from the Trump administration, which froze $400 million in federal funding to the school. The administration had conditioned the release of funds on Columbia agreeing to a series of measures, including changes to admissions policies, and placing the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies department under academic receivership.
Armstrong had agreed to a mask ban and oversight of the department, and federal officials had signaled that Columbia was on the right track for money to be unfrozen. Then, Armstrong infuriated the school’s critics after reports surfaced that she downplayed the changes in a Zoom meeting with faculty, including the decision to put the department under academic receivership.
Shipman, a journalist who was married to former President Barack Obama’s press secretary, is already fielding criticism from Stefanik as well as Virginia Foxx, the former chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee who convened hearings with university presidents. A committee report released in October accused Shipman of calling congressional oversight into antisemitism on campuses “nonsense.”
In response to the attacks, Columbia said Sunday it is focused on doing what is right and honoring its commitments to create a school where students are safe and able to flourish.
The federal government has threatened to withhold funding for universities after Trump accused them of fostering antisemitism and harboring foreign students who have shown support for Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the US. That’s caused concern among some universities that the government is suppressing free speech and conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
Amid the pressure, Yale and Harvard removed employees from their posts. Yale’s Law School said on Friday it terminated Helyeh Doutaghi, a research scholar, who was placed on leave this month after being accused of having alleged ties to a group subject to US sanctions. At Harvard, the student newspaper reported that the faculty leaders of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies — professor of Turkish Studies Cemal Kafadar and history professor Rosie Bsheer — are being forced to leave their posts.
Days earlier, Harvard said in a university publication that its School of Public Health had suspended a partnership it has with Birzeit University in the West Bank while it undergoes a review that began last summer.
