Columbia University’s president issued a groveling apology, saying she regrets a text suggesting removal of Jewish board member and a separate one urging the school to get an “Arab” board member “quickly.”
A House investigation dug up the texts sent by acting president Claire Shipman in January 2024 amidst anti-Israel campus protests where she advocated removing Shoshana Shendelman from the board of trustees.
Shendelman was one of the most vocal members against harassment of Jewish students, but in the private texts Shipman agreed with a text saying she could be a “mole,” called her “extraordinarily unhelpful,” and suggested they “get somebody from the middle east,” according to the Committee on Education and Workforce’s report.
The Post obtained a private email sent Wednesday afternoon by Shipman to “trusted groups of friends and colleagues” in which she said she “made a mistake” and “[promised] to do better,” amid the college losing over $400 million in federal funding for not doing enough to fight antisemitism.
“Let me be clear: The things I said in a moment of frustration and stress were wrong,” Shipman wrote.
“They do not reflect how I feel… It was a moment of immense pressure, over a year and a half ago, as we navigated some deeply turbulent times. But that doesn’t change the fact that I made a mistake.”
The email was shared with The Post by an anonymous source at the university. A second person with knowledge of the matter confirmed the legitimacy of the letter to The Post and said it was sent to around a dozen individuals.
It comes after Representatives Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Tim Walberg (R-MI), chairs of the Committee on Education and Workforce, sent a letter to Shipman on Tuesday, which included private WhatsApp messages sent by Shipman to colleagues in the wake of October 7th.
In another message Shipman said she was “so, so tired” of Shendelman, a Jewish biotech executive.
“These exchanges raise the question of why you appeared to be in favor of removing one of the board’s most outspoken Jewish advocates at a time when Columbia students were facing a shocking level of fear and hostility,” Stefanik and Walberg wrote in their letter, requesting “clarifications” on the messages.
In her private email, Shipman said she apologized directly “to the person named in my texts” — presumably referring to Shendelman.
“I have tremendous respect and appreciation for that board member, whose voice on behalf of Columbia’s Jewish community is critically important,” she wrote. “I should not have written those things, and I am sorry.”
The messages stretch back to late 2023, shortly after the Oct. 7th terror attack on Israel by Hamas, when Shipman was the co-chair of Columbia’s board of trustees.
In a December 2023 message to then-president Minouche Shafik, Shipman referred to “the capital [sic] hill nonsense,” presumably a reference to Shafik’s being hauled before a House committee to testify about campus antisemitism.
“Congress’s efforts to ensure the safety and security of Jewish students — who make up almost a quarter of your campus population — is not ‘capital hill nonsense,’” Stefanik and Walberg pushed back.
The revelations come as Columbia is attempting to keep federal funding, after the Trump administration yanked roughly $400 million in grants and contracts from the elite school in March over its failure to stamp out antisemitism on campus.
Shipman has also adhered to a list of Trump’s demands by agreeing to a slew of policy changes, including a mask ban and allowing campus cops to arrest students or boot them off campus when deemed appropriate.
In her private letter, Shipman said that the university is “committed to restoring our critical partnership with the federal government as quickly as possible, so that thousands of our faculty and researchers and students can get back to the essential work they do on behalf of humanity.”
She also acknowledged a potential breach of trust with the Columbia community.
A Columbia spokesperson told The Post the texts “are now being published out of context and reflect a particularly difficult moment in time for the University.”
“Acting President Claire Shipman has been vocally and visibly committed to eradicating antisemitism on campus; the work underway at the university to create a safe and welcoming environment for all community members makes that plain,” the spokesperson said.
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