Four days after stepping down as Columbia University’s interim president, Dr. Katrina Armstrong testified in a contentious closed-door deposition in Washington that she didn’t remember specifics from Columbia’s own report on antisemitism and had trouble describing how she had responded to its recommendations.
“It has been a very, very, very challenging year,” she said, according to a transcript that was posted online and confirmed as authentic by a government official. “I do not have specific recollections, sitting here, of what is in this report or what I recall from this report.”
During several hours of questioning, conducted last Tuesday by the acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services as part of an investigation into antisemitism at Columbia, Dr. Armstrong repeatedly said that the past year had been such a “blur” that she had trouble remembering details.
The transcript was leaked to the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication, which first published it on Sunday. Also on Sunday, Columbia’s medical school announced that Dr. Armstrong would be taking a sabbatical to “spend time with her family,” instead of returning to her role as the chief executive of the medical center as had been announced.
The testimony comes at a highly sensitive time for Columbia. The university is trying to convince the Trump administration that it is responding seriously to White House demands to do more to fight antisemitism on campus. Trump officials have already cut about $400 million in federal research funding to Columbia and have told the school that negotiations to restore the grants will begin only if the school meets certain conditions.
In a letter sent on March 21 to federal officials, the university agreed to take steps to rein in demonstrations and increase oversight of its Middle East studies department, among other concessions. Until Dr. Armstrong stepped down a week later, the negotiations were taking place under her oversight.
Columbia’s board of trustees released a statement Sunday distancing itself from Dr. Armstrong’s testimony.
“This testimony does not reflect the hard work undertaken by the university to combat antisemitism, harassment and discrimination and ensure the safety and well-being of our community,” the trustees said, adding that they were “firmly committed to resolving the issues raised by our federal regulators, with respect to discrimination, harassment and antisemitism, and implementing the policy changes and commitments outlined in our March 21 letter.”
The hearing transcript provided an inside glimpse of the tension between Columbia and representatives of the Trump administration’s multiagency antisemitism task force, which is investigating at least 10 universities in an effort to root out what it sees as disturbing antisemitic activity on campuses.
The task force was not satisfied with Dr. Armstrong’s testimony, finding her answers evasive and lacking in seriousness, and it was also dismayed that she could not recall any incidents in which Jewish students had been harassed on campus, according to a government official familiar with the task force’s thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss internal matters.
Sean R. Keveney, the Health and Human Services lawyer who led the questioning for the task force, repeatedly became frustrated with Dr. Armstrong’s failure to remember whether she had heard about specific antisemitic incidents, such as an allegation from Jewish students that they had been spit on, the transcript showed.
“I’m just trying to understand how you have such a terrible memory of specific incidents of antisemitism when you’re clearly an intelligent doctor,” Mr. Keveney said.
He also delved into a controversy that directly preceded Dr. Armstrong’s resignation as interim president. In the days after Columbia officials committed to tightening protest policies and oversight, Dr. Armstrong appeared to play down those changes in a faculty meeting, a transcript of which was leaked to the news media.
Mr. Keveney asked her about that meeting, saying, “Isn’t it true that in private with the faculty, you backed away from what you said the university was going to do?”
Dr. Armstrong responded that while she did not recall exactly what she had said, that had not been her intent.
“To the degree that there was any imprecision in my language or any confusion, I put out a public statement making it very clear that I was deeply and fully committed to the steps in that statement,” she said.
Dr. Armstrong also testified that becoming Columbia’s interim leader after Nemat Shafik abruptly resigned as president last August had led to the most challenging year of her life. In a personal admission, she said the reason she had decided to accept the job was that her three college-age children had urged her to.
“I initially said no,” she testified. “And then my kids got up — actually, because it happened all at like 9 in the morning — and then my kids got up and said, Mom, you have to do it.”
Also on Sunday, Angela V. Olinto, the Columbia provost, wrote in an email to the campus that the government had revoked the visas of four international students, part of a wave of such revocations at universities across the country. She did not provide any information about their identities.
The university had not been informed of the revocations but had learned about them over the previous two days by checking a government database, she wrote. Last month, the Department of Homeland Security revoked the visas and green cards of several Columbia students, including two legal permanent residents, Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of the School of International and Public Affairs, and Yunseo Chung, an undergraduate who had lived in the United States since childhood.
Michael C. Bender contributed reporting.
Sharon Otterman is a Times reporter covering higher education, public health and other issues facing New York City.
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