Columbia University President Resigns After Months of Tensions Over Pro-Palestinian Protests

The president of Columbia University in New York announced her resignation on Wednesday, August 14. Minouche Shafik invokes the “crisis period” spring when the New York campus was the epicenter of student protests against the war in Gaza as well as controversy over rising anti-Semitism.

The immediate departure of this American economist of Egyptian origin, which she announced in a letter to the teaching and student community, is a surprise, since she had escaped the wave of resignations last winter of her counterparts at the University of Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Magill, and Harvard, Claudine Gay. “I am making this announcement now so that the new leadership is in place before the start of the next semester.”wrote “with sadness” Minouche Shafik in an email obtained by AFP.

“This has been a time of crisis in which it has been difficult to overcome the divergent opinions within our community”she laments. She reported that “threats”, of “insults” or even “mistreatment” against her, “colleagues” And “students”, and has “decided” that his “resignation will allow Columbia to better face future challenges”. “We must all do everything in our power to resist the forces of polarization.”implores the now ex-president of Columbia again.

The university she has led since July 2023 was one of the first to mobilize at the start of Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in response to the Palestinian movement’s bloody attack on its soil on October 7. Columbia led the protests and campus occupations across the United States in April, reminiscent of the movement against the Vietnam War in 1968. At Minouche Shafik’s call, the New York police evicted a few dozen activists and students on April 30, and the major graduation ceremony was canceled.