As Ed pointed out this morning, Columbia President Claire Shipman apologized for “things I said in a moment of frustration and stress” about Columbia board member Shoshana Shendelman. That moment of frustration seems to have lasted for several weeks. At one point, Shipman accused Shendelman of being a mole.
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.
And it turns out a group of left-wing Columbia faculty and staff still believe Shendelman is a mole. They put out a letter from their anonymous Substack account accusing her of leaking the emails in question to the Washington Free Beacon.
In private messages dating to late 2023 and early 2024, recently leaked to the press, Claire Shipman argued for board diversity, questioned newly appointed trustee Shoshana Shendelman’s exaggerated complaints against student protesters, hesitated to call the NYPD on campus, suggested suspended student orgs be reinstated, and noted the federal government’s travesties…
The timing of this leak is suspicious. Who benefits from sending Shipman’s messages to the right wing Free Beacon? Shoshana Shendelman…
The insinuation that Shendelman leaked the text messages doesn’t make any sense. In fact, the Free Beacon report they are criticizing said specifically where they got the texts.
Shendelman…could not have leaked Shipman’s messages, as Columbia itself provided them to the House Committee on Education and Workforce.
The committee first asked Columbia for documents related to campus anti-Semitism in February 2024. By August, the committee determined that Columbia had “failed to produce numerous priority items requested by the Committee” and subpoenaed the school as a result. The subpoena specifically covered text messages from Shipman.
The committee went on to release some of the texts—including one in which Shipman described congressional oversight of campus anti-Semitism as “capital [sic] hill nonsense”—in an October 2024 report. It followed that report up with a July 1 letter to Shipman that included her texts disparaging Shendelman. The Free Beacon’s report on those texts notes that they were “included in a letter sent to Columbia on Tuesday by committee chair Tim Walberg (R., Mich.) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.).”
The letter and its contents were published on Rep. Stefanik’s web page on July 1, so there was no need to leak it to anyone. It was public and, again, the Free Beacon gave the letter as the source. So it seems like the faculty and staff at Columbia didn’t read the Free Beacon story they were complaining about. In any case, their other complaint was that President Shipman apologized.
In response to this pressure, Interim President Shipman had the opportunity to stand by her words, and demand Shendelman resign. However, she chose to apologize for everything she wrote.
While we reject the congressional demand for her resignation, we are disappointed in Shipman’s apology. Rather than apologize, Shipman should have continued to advocate for a BOT more representative of Columbia’s student and faculty population (there are currently no Muslim BOT members), freedom of speech, and our students’ right to protest. Instead, she caved and failed to insist on the university’s autonomy. SHAME.
There’s one reason they want Shendelman to resign and want President Shipman to demand that outcome. Because Shendelman writes stuff like this for Fox News:
…in the spring of 2024, my home was filled with students (my children and many of their classmates) who no longer felt safe on Columbia’s campus. Their fears didn’t stem from intellectual challenge or debate—it stemmed from intimidation. Protesters, many masked, others emboldened by institutional tolerance, took control of the physical environment of the university. They shut down classrooms, buildings and libraries…
After voicing my concerns regarding antisemitism on campus, I became a target of certain media voices determined to erase decades of my work, service, and scholarship with a few calculated, malevolent strokes of a pen…
The real Columbia—my Columbia—is a monument of advancement shaped by generations of human endeavor. Monuments, however, can be vandalized and dismantled. And these ongoing campaigns have not been acts of civil dialogue; they have been acts of desecration. Of blaming rather than solving. Of tearing apart instead of sewing together. The world is full of destroyers. Their work is quick, loud, and rarely lasting. But it is the builders – the creators – who carry humanity forward…
Our educational institutions should reflect the hope, freedom and opportunity that our nation offers to all of us. Let’s rebuild institutions like Columbia together to ensure that hatred and chaos do not dominate, and everyone feels included and respected. This is our generation’s moment to lead.
Can you almost hear the seething hatred of the Columbia radicals when reading this? Shendelman is right about Columbia and President Shipman was wrong to try to badmouth her in an effort to downplay what was happening. The anonymous complainers who are rooting for more of the same antisemitic chaos are part of the problem too. They should stop being cowards and sign their names to their open letters.
