A congressional committee investigating antisemitism on college campuses has released private text messages from Claire Shipman, the acting president of Columbia University, that show her expressing distrust and dislike of a Jewish member of the board of trustees who had been outspoken about the treatment of Jewish students.
The text messages, which were excerpted in a letter to Ms. Shipman demanding that she provide an explanation and included texts on other subjects, were from 2023 and 2024. The timing of their release this week seemed intended to question the leadership of Ms. Shipman as she negotiates with the Trump administration over the potential return of more than $400 million in federal research funding. The administration had said it cut the funding because of what it described as the school’s failure to protect Jewish students from harassment.
The committee “is seeking clarity regarding several messages you sent that appear to downplay and even mock the pervasive culture of antisemitism on Columbia’s campus,” Representatives Tim Walberg and Elise Stefanik, two Republican members of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, wrote in their Tuesday letter to her.
Ms. Shipman sent an apology note on Wednesday to a limited group of alumni, board members and friends, saying she wanted to rebuild trust after the texts were made public.
“Let me be clear: The things I said in a moment of frustration and stress were wrong,” she wrote. “They do not reflect how I feel. I have apologized directly to the person named in my texts, and I am apologizing now to you.”
The university confirmed the authenticity of the apology note, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times by someone who received it.
In a social media posting on Wednesday, Representative Stefanik issued a one-word demand to Ms. Shipman: “RESIGN.”
The texts were written when Ms. Shipman was the co-president of Columbia’s board of trustees and as she worked with the board and Nemat Shafik, who was then the university president, to respond to campus turmoil after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. Some of the texts had been made public by the committee in October 2024, in a lengthy report about campus antisemitism.
In some of the messages, Ms. Shipman and another board member questioned whether Shoshana Shendelman, a Jewish trustee, should remain on the board and if she could be trusted with information as they debated whether to call police to campus to end an encampment that was part of pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
“Do you believe that she is a mole? A fox in the henhouse?” the other board member, Wanda Holland Greene, asked Ms. Shipman on April 22, 2024. “I do,” Ms Shipman replied. Ms. Holland Greene left the board later in 2024. In another text, Ms. Shipman called Dr. Shendelman “extraordinarily unhelpful.”
Reached by phone, Ms. Holland Greene said she was in a meeting and wasn’t interested in speaking to a reporter.
Dr. Shendelman is a scientist and founder of several biotech companies and a first-generation American whose family fled Iran. In a recent Fox News opinion piece, she described how during pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the spring of 2024, her own children and some of their classmates no longer felt safe on campus.
“Protesters, many masked, others emboldened by institutional tolerance, took control of the physical environment of the university,” she wrote, adding that the university needed to be rebuilt “to ensure that hatred and chaos do not dominate, and everyone feels included and respected.”
Dr. Shendelman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Victor Mendelson, another member of Columbia’s board of trustees who has also called for more efforts to fight antisemitism on campus, praised her, saying she had been “a great voice for the protection of Jewish students and fairness.”
Mr. Mendelson said he believed that Ms. Shipman’s apology was sincere.
“Claire has been highly focused on antisemitism for years, and she has been a friend to the Jewish community, “ he said.
In one text that the committee publicized and that includes typos, Ms. Shipman said she wanted to add “somebody from the middle east or who is Arab” to the board. Another text, which was previously made public, refers to the contentious congressional hearings into campus antisemitism as “capital hill nonsense.”
“I should not have written those things, and I am sorry,” Ms. Shipman wrote in her apology note for all the texts Wednesday. “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. I promise to do better.”
Sharon Otterman is a Times reporter covering higher education, public health and other issues facing New York City.
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