New Columbia President Attacked by Stefanik Over 2023 Text Message
The New York Times
Elise Stefanik, a prominent Republican, questioned Claire Shipman’s commitment to protecting Jewish students. Ms. Shipman pledged “to build on the significant progress we’ve made.”
Claire Shipman is only days into her job as acting president of Columbia University but is already being targeted by a prominent House Republican who questions her commitment to fighting antisemitism on campus.
Ms. Shipman, in a private text message in December 2023 to Nemat Shafik, who was then Columbia’s president, referred to congressional hearings into campus antisemitism as “capital hill nonsense,” according to a transcript of the exchange released by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce as part of an investigative report last year.
The comment is coming back to haunt Ms. Shipman. Representative Elise Stefanik, who is remaining in the House after President Trump withdrew her nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, seized on the remark during a television interview Sunday, predicting that Ms. Shipman will not last long in her new position.
“It’s already come out that she has criticized and belittled the House investigation and the accountability measures and has failed to protect Jewish students,” Ms. Stefanik said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
“It’s untenable for her to be in this position, and I think it is only going to be a matter of weeks before she’s forced to step down as well,” she added.
On X, Ms. Stefanik, whose pointed questioning of Ivy League presidents about antisemitism during the committee hearings sparked the departures of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, gave other details.
