Pinned
Nicholas Fandos and Sharon Otterman
Here’s what to know about the hearing.
Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, agreed on Wednesday that the university needed to take a tougher stance on antisemitism, in response to harsh questioning from a Republican-led House committee in an almost four-hour hearing.
Republicans described what they called a pervasive pattern of bias, including assaults, harassment and vandalism from students and faculty on campus since the Israel-Hamas war began. The hearing was the latest in a campaign to try to prove that college campuses have done little to combat antisemitism.
In her testimony, Dr. Shafik often sounded conciliatory as she tried to reassure the House Committee on Education and the Workforce that she was changing policies and punishing offenders, while also protecting free speech.
It was a stark contrast to the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, who in a Dec. 5 hearing struggled to answer whether students would be punished if they called for the genocide of Jews. That failure helped lead to their resignations.
“I promise you, from the messages I’m hearing from students, they are getting the message that violations of our policies will have consequences,” Dr. Shafik said.
Here’s what else to know:
Representative Elise Stefanik, the No. 4 Republican in the House, reprised her role from the December hearing as chief prosecutor. In rapid-fire questioning, she pressed Dr. Shafik on three faculty members who defended Hamas or made remarks hostile to Israeli students.
Dr. Shafik said the faculty comments were “unacceptable” and that Columbia had initiated disciplinary proceedings against five professors. She promised that one would never teach at the school again and agreed to remove another as the chairman of an academic review committee.
Dr. Shafik conceded that Columbia had been unprepared, with policies “designed for a very different world.” But after updating them, she said, the university suspended 15 students and warned others. She also stated that any student calling for the genocide of Jews would be punished.
Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, one of two Muslim women serving in Congress, pushed Dr. Shafik from the left. She asked why students on campus were evicted and suspended for their participation in a pro-Palestinian event. Dr. Shafik said the students had refused to cooperate with an investigation.
April 17, 2024, 2:58 p.m. ET
Alan Blinder
Reporting on education
Here are our takeaways from the hearing.
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Four Columbia University officials, including the university’s president and the leaders of its board, went before Congress on Wednesday to try to extinguish criticism that the campus in New York has become a hub of antisemitic behavior and thought.
Over more than three hours, the Columbia leaders appeared to avoid the kind of caustic, viral exchange that laid the groundwork for the recent departures of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, whose own appearances before the same House committee ultimately turned into public relations disasters.
Here are the takeaways from the hearing on Capitol Hill.
With three words, Columbia leaders neutralized the question that tripped up officials from other campuses.
In December, questions about whether calling for the genocide of Jewish people violated university disciplinary policies led the presidents of Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania to offer caveat-laden, careful answers that ignited fierce criticism.
The topic surfaced early in Wednesday’s hearing about Columbia, and the Columbia witnesses did not hesitate when they answered.
“Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Columbia’s code of conduct?” asked Representative Suzanne Bonamici, Democrat of Oregon.
“Yes, it does,” replied David Greenwald, the co-chair of Columbia’s board of trustees.
“Yes, it does,” Claire Shipman, the board’s other co-chair, said next.
“Yes, it does,” Nemat Shafik, Columbia’s president, followed.
“Yes, it does,” said David Schizer, a longtime Columbia faculty member who is helping to lead a university task force on antisemitism.
To some lawmakers, Columbia’s effort in recent months remains lacking.
Even before the hearing started, Columbia officials have said that its procedures were not up to the task of managing the tumult that has unfolded in the months after the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7.
In a written submission to the committee, Dr. Shafik, who became Columbia’s president last year, said she was “personally frustrated to find that Columbia’s policies and structures were sometimes unable to meet the moment.”
She added the university’s disciplinary system was far more accustomed to dealing with infractions around matters like alcohol use and academic misconduct. But Columbia officials have lately toughened rules around protests and scrutinized students and faculty members alike.
Some Republican lawmakers pressed the university to take more aggressive action.
Representative Tim Walberg, Republican of Michigan, focused on Joseph Massad, a Columbia professor he accused of glorifying the Oct. 7 attack. Mr. Walberg demanded to know whether Ms. Shipman and Mr. Greenwald would approve tenure for Dr. Massad today.
Both said they would not, prompting Mr. Walberg to retort, “Then why is he still in the classroom?"
In an email on Wednesday, Professor Massad said he had not watched the hearing but had seen some clips. He accused Mr. Walberg of distorting his writing and said it was “unfortunate” that Columbia officials had not defended him.
Professor Massad said it was also “news to me” that he was the subject of a Columbia inquiry, as Dr. Shafik said he was.
Dr. Shafik, who noted that Columbia has about 4,700 faculty members, vowed in the hearing that there would be “consequences” for employees who “make remarks that cross the line in terms of antisemitism.”
So far, Dr. Shafik said, five people have been removed from the classroom or ousted from Columbia in recent months. Dr. Shafik said that Mohamed Abdou, a visiting professor who drew the ire of Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, “is grading his students’ papers and will never teach at Columbia again.” Dr. Abdou did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Columbia’s strategy before Congress: Signal collaboration, and even give some ground.
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Congressional witnesses can use an array of approaches to get through a hearing, from defiance to genuflection. Columbia leaders’ approach on Wednesday tilted toward the latter as they faced a proceeding titled, “Columbia in Crisis: Columbia University’s Response to Antisemitism.”
Ms. Shipman told lawmakers that she was “grateful” for “the spotlight that you are putting on this ancient hatred,” and Mr. Greenwald said the university appreciated “the opportunity to assist the committee in its important effort to examine antisemitism on college campuses.”
But there were moments when university leaders offered more than Washington-ready rhetoric.
When Ms. Stefanik pressed Dr. Shafik to commit to removing Professor Massad from a leadership post, the president inhaled, her hands folded before her on the witness table.
“I think that would be — I think, I would, yes. Let me come back with yes,” Dr. Shafik responded after a few seconds. (After the hearing, a university spokesman said Professor Massad’s term as chair of an academic review panel was already set to end after this semester.)
Representative Kevin Kiley, Republican of California, effectively asked Dr. Shafik to draw a red line for the faculty.
“Would you be willing to make just a statement right now to any members of the faculty at your university that if they engage in antisemitic words or conduct that they should find another place to work?” Mr. Kiley asked.
“I would be happy to make a statement that anyone, any faculty member, at Columbia who behaves in an antisemitic way or in any way a discriminatory way should find somewhere else to go,” Dr. Shafik replied.
Even though the conciliatory tactics regularly mollified lawmakers, they could deepen discontent on campus.
Republicans are already planning another hearing.
The hearing that contributed to the exits of the Harvard and Penn presidents emboldened the Republicans who control the House committee that convened on Wednesday.
Even before the proceeding with Columbia leaders, they had already scheduled a hearing for next month with top officials from the school systems in New York City, Montgomery County, Md., and Berkeley, Calif.
Stephanie Saul and Anemona Hartocollis contributed reporting.
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April 17, 2024, 2:17 p.m. ET
Anusha Bayya
Reporting from New York
Riley Chodak, 22, is graduating in a month and said she feels like her senior-year college experience has been snatched away from her because of the atmosphere on campus. “The fact that our campus is blocked off — it feels a little bit like a war zone here,” the Ohio native said. She said she believes the university is “cracking down on anyone who's trying to show anyone solidarity.”
April 17, 2024, 1:51 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Reporting from Capitol Hill
And we are adjourned! No single standout moment. This hearing was perhaps most remarkable for how much the Columbia representatives agreed with the committee that antisemitism was a serious problem on its campus.
April 17, 2024, 1:52 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Reporting from Capitol Hill
It remains to be seen how Columbia’s faculty will respond to their president's pledges to crack down on Joseph Massad and other tenured faculty that the committee targeted as antisemitic and demanded disciplinary action be taken against.
April 17, 2024, 1:49 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Reporting from Capitol Hill
In her closing statement, Representative Virginia Foxx is using some of the thousands of documents she got from Columbia to fact check some of their remarks. She says it was misleading for Columbia to say 15 students have been suspended after Oct. 7. She said only three students were, for antisemitic conduct, and those were lifted. She also says the only two students who remain suspended are the two Jewish students who were accused of attacking a protest with a foul-smelling substance.
April 17, 2024, 1:42 p.m. ET
Anusha Bayya
Reporting from New York
Mimi Gupta, 45, a Columbia grad student, was in the Multicultural Center on campus where President Shafik’s testimony is being broadcast on the big screen. “The president of Columbia is just getting eviscerated," she said.
April 17, 2024, 1:44 p.m. ET
Anusha Bayya
Reporting from New York
“Senators, they just are asking really leading questions, talking over her and the students are just gasping and are shocked,” she said. Some in the audience occasionally piped up, shouting towards the screen when they felt that those grilling Shafik were being particularly hostile.
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April 17, 2024, 1:42 p.m. ET
Stephanie Saul
Who are the Columbia professors mentioned in the hearing?
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Several Columbia faculty members — Joseph Andoni Massad, Katherine Franke and Mohamed Abdou — were in the spotlight at Wednesday’s hearing before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
All three had taken pro-Palestinian stances, and lawmakers grilled university officials over how they responded to what Columbia’s President Nemat Shafik agreed were “unacceptable” comments by the faculty members.
At the hearing, Dr. Shafik divulged that two of the professors — Dr. Massad and Ms. Franke — were under investigation for making “discriminatory remarks,” and said that Dr. Abdou “will never work at Columbia again.” Such responses drew a sharp rebuke from some professors and the American Association of University Professors, which said she capitulated to political grandstanding and, in the process, violated established tenets of academic freedom.
“We are witnessing a new era of McCarthyism where a House Committee is using college presidents and professors for political theater,” said Irene Mulvey, national president of the AAUP. She added, “President Shafik’s public naming of professors under investigation to placate a hostile committee sets a dangerous precedent for academic freedom and has echoes of the cowardice often displayed during the McCarthy era.”
Dr. Massad, who is of Palestinian Christian descent, was the focus of Representative Tim Walberg’s questioning. He teaches modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia, where he also received his Ph.D. in political science.
Long known for his anti-Israel positions, he published a controversial article in The Electronic Intifada last October, in the wake of the Hamas attack, describing it as a “resistance offensive” staged in retaliation to Israel’s settler-colonies near the Gaza border.
The piece drew a visceral response and demands for his dismissal in a petition by a Columbia student that was signed by tens of thousands of people. The petition specifically criticized Dr. Massad’s use of the word “awesome” to describe the scene of the attack.
Dr. Massad’s posture has drawn controversy for years. When he was awarded tenure in 2009, 14 Columbia professors expressed their concern in a letter to the provost. Generally, professors with tenure face a much higher bar for termination than those without the status.
More recently, however, professors nationally have rallied to support him, emphasizing his academic right to voice his opinion.
In a statement after the hearing, Dr. Massad said that the House committee members had mischaracterized his article. Mr. Walberg said that Dr. Massad had said Hamas’s murder of Jews was “awesome, astonishing, astounding and incredible.”
“I certainly said nothing of the sort,” Dr. Massad said.
In testimony responding to questions from Mr. Walberg, a Michigan Republican, Dr. Shafik said that Dr. Massad had been removed from a leadership role at the university, where he headed an academic review panel.
But Dr. Massad said in an email that he had not been notified by Columbia that he was under investigation, adding that he had been previously scheduled to end his chairmanship of the academic review committee at the end of the semester, a statement that a spokesman for Columbia verified after the hearing.
Dr. Massad said it was “unfortunate” that Dr. Shafik and other university leaders “would condemn fabricated statements that I never made when all three of them should have corrected the record to show that I never said or wrote such reprehensible statements.”
Katherine Franke, a law professor at Columbia, was also mentioned in the hearing for her activist role and a comment that “all Israeli students who served in the I.D.F. are dangerous and shouldn’t be on campus,” referring to the Israel Defense Forces.
Ms. Franke, who did not immediately respond to requests for comment, recently wrote a piece in The Nation raising questions about academic freedom at Columbia, where she has taught since 1999.
Mohamed Abdou was also named in the hearing. Dr. Abdou was hired as a visiting scholar for the Spring 2024 term, and was teaching a course called “Decolonial-Queerness and Abolition.”
A biography on Columbia’s website describes Dr. Abdou as “a North African-Egyptian Muslim anarchist interdisciplinary activist-scholar of Indigenous, Black, critical race and Islamic studies, as well as gender, sexuality, abolition and decolonization.”
Representative Elise Stefanik asked why he was hired even after his social media post on Oct. 11 that read, “I’m with Hamas & Hezbollah & Islamic Jihad.” Dr. Shafik said, “He will never work at Columbia again. Dr. Abdou did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Sheldon Pollock, a retired Columbia professor who serves on the executive committee of Columbia’s American Association of University Professors chapter, called such comments about specific professors “deeply worrying,” adding that he thought Dr. Shafik was “bullied by these people into saying things I’m sure she regrets.”
He continued, “What happened to the idea of academic freedom in today’s testimony? I don’t think that phrase was used even once.
A spokesman for Columbia declined to comment on the criticism of Dr. Shafik.
April 17, 2024, 1:32 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Reporting from Capitol Hill
Elise Stefanik is up again. She is trying to get Shafik to condemn “from the River to the Sea” as antisemitic and discipline students for saying it. Shafik says “we are looking at it.”
April 17, 2024, 1:33 p.m. ET
Annie Karni
Reporting on Congress
Stefanik asked the same question of Claudine Gay, the former president of Harvard University. Gay’s response was that, while she personally thought the language was “abhorrent,” the university embraced “a commitment to free expression even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful.”
April 17, 2024, 1:28 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Reporting from Capitol Hill
Several Republicans have now praised the Columbia representatives for giving clear answers to their questions.
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April 17, 2024, 1:23 p.m. ET
Annie Karni
Reporting on Congress
Stefanik seems to have pushed Shafik into committing to remove a professor, Joseph Massad, who has become a focus of the hearing because of his statements celebrating the Hamas attacks, as chair of the academic review committee. Shafik appeared flustered by the line of questioning, and confused about his current status. But she answered “yes” when asked if she would commit to removing him as chair.
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“He was spoken to by his head of department and his dean.” “And what was he told?” “I was not in those conversations, I think —” “But you’re not what he was told —” “That language was unacceptable.” “What was he told? What was he told?” “That that language was unacceptable.” “And were there any other enforcement actions taken? Any other disciplinary actions taken?” “In his case? He has not repeated anything like that ever since.” “Does he need to repeat stating that the massacre of Israeli civilians was awesome? Does he need to repeat his participation in an unauthorized pro-Hamas demonstration on April 4? Has he been terminated as chair?” “Congresswoman, I want to confirm the facts before getting back to you.” “I know you confirmed that he was under investigation.” “Yes, I can confirm that.” “Did you confirm he was still the chair?” “I need to confirm that with you. I’m —” “Well, let me ask you this: Will you make the commitment to remove him as chair?” “I think that would be — I think, I would, yes. Let me come back with yes.”
April 17, 2024, 1:18 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Reporting from Capitol Hill
Representative Elise Stefanik is challenging President Shafik after she had said in earlier testimony there had not been anti-Jewish protests on campus. Now, under questioning, she acknowledges anti-Jewish things were said at protests.
April 17, 2024, 1:19 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Reporting from Capitol Hill
Overall, Republicans on this committee are pushing Columbia to take a tough stance on defining what antisemitism is, and include anti-Zionist speech, something it has tried not to do. It doesn’t have an official definition of the term.
April 17, 2024, 1:13 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Reporting from Capitol Hill
Representative Aaron Bean, a Republican of Florida, congratulates the Columbia witnesses, saying they did better than the presidents of Harvard and Penn at their hearing in December. They were able to say they were against antisemitism, but he says that there is still fear on campus among Jewish students. “You are saying the right things.”
April 17, 2024, 1:09 p.m. ET
Annie Karni
Reporting on Congress
While there have been some tense moments in the hearing, there has not yet been the kind of viral moment related to the university’s inadequate response to antisemitism that House Republicans were able to create in the infamous hearing with the presidents of Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and M.I.T. But that exchange, which ultimately lead to the ouster of two Ivy League presidents, came at the tail end of a session that lasted four and a half hours.
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April 17, 2024, 1:03 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Reporting from Capitol Hill
Here are some of the recent antisemitism allegations against Columbia.
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The House committee investigating Columbia University for antisemitism has claimed that “an environment of pervasive antisemitism has been documented at Columbia for more than two decades” and that the administration has not done enough in response.
Here are some of the recent allegations:
On Oct. 11, 2023, a Columbia student who is Israeli was beaten with a stick by a former undergraduate who had been ripping down pictures of Israeli hostages, according to the New York Police Department.
Multiple students say they have been cursed at for being Jewish. One student held up a sign in October that read “Columbia doesn’t care about the safety and well-being of Jewish students.”
Following allegations that two Israeli students released a foul-smelling chemical at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in January, a poster appeared around campus with the image of a blue and white skunk with a Star of David on its back.
Several professors have made antisemitic remarks or expressed support for the Oct. 7 attack, including Joseph Massad, a professor of modern Arab politics, who published an article on Oct. 8 describing the attack with terms such as “awesome” and “astounding.”
April 17, 2024, 1:00 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Reporting from Capitol Hill
Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, spoke on behalf of pro-Palestinian students who were suspended or hurt. Shafik said she suspended students after a Resistance 101 event, where people spoke in support of Hamas, because they did not cooperate with the investigation. Omar also asks about an alleged chemical attack on pro-Palestinian protesters. Shafik says she reached out to those students, but that the investigation is still with the police.
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April 17, 2024, 1:01 p.m. ET
Annie Karni
Reporting on Congress
Omar, one of just two Muslim women serving in Congress, is grilling Shafik from the left, using her time to ask why pro-Palestinian students on campus were evicted, suspended, harassed and intimidated for their participation in a pro-Palestinian event. Shafik said it was a very serious situation and the students refused to cooperate with the investigation.
April 17, 2024, 12:52 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Reporting from Capitol Hill
Two professors, Joseph Massad and Katherine Franke, are “under investigation for discriminatory remarks,” Shafik says, apparently breaking some news here.
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April 17, 2024, 12:47 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Reporting from Capitol Hill
Representative Jamaal Bowman, a Democrat of New York, is trying to make the case for pro-Palestinian students who feel they have a right to express their views, saying that those views aren’t necessarily hateful, even if they make people feel uncomfortable. He’s entering for the record a letter from 600 faculty and students supporting open inquiry on campus.
April 17, 2024, 12:43 p.m. ET
Alan Blinder
Reporting on education
The hearing is back after a brief recess. The length of the proceedings could prove important, since Claudine Gay, Harvard’s former president, has partly blamed the protracted nature of an exchange during December’s hearing for answers she gave that drew widespread criticism.
April 17, 2024, 12:32 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Reporting from Capitol Hill
Representative Lisa McClain, Republican of Michigan, is drilling down on whether there is a definition on campus for antisemitism. David Schizer, who is a co-chair of the university's task force on antisemitism, calls a New York Times article about how the task force has no definition false. However, the committee has no official definition for antisemitism. He offers his own personal definition to the committee, as does Shafik. “For me personally, any discrimination against people of the Jewish faith is antisemitism,” she said.
April 17, 2024, 12:20 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Reporting from Capitol Hill
Earlier in the hearing, Claire Shipman, co-chair of Columbia's board of trustees, detailed steps Columbia has taken to try to get the tensions under control, including suspending two student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.
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April 17, 2024, 12:10 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Reporting from Capitol Hill
Columbia has been host to charged protests over Gaza in recent months.
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Columbia University has toughened how it handles campus protests since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7. Here are some of the key moments:
Oct. 12, 2023: Hundreds of protesters gathered at Columbia University for tense pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrations that caused school administrators to take the then-extraordinary step of closing the campus to the public. The school now closes the campus routinely when protests are scheduled.
Nov. 9, 2023: Columbia suspended two main pro-Palestinian student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, after they held an unauthorized student walkout. Administrators said the event had “proceeded despite warnings and contained threatening rhetoric and intimidation” after one person shouted anti-Jewish epithets. Protest organizers said they had tried to silence the person.
Jan. 19, 2024: Pro-Palestinian protesters said that someone sprayed them with a foul-smelling substance at a rally, causing at least eight students to seek medical treatment. Columbia labeled the incident a possible hate crime, barred the alleged perpetrators from campus and opened an investigation. Protest attendees, citing video evidence, say they believe the perpetrators were two students who had been verbally harassing them, but Columbia has given no details about their identities.
Feb. 19, 2024: Columbia announced a new protest policy. Protests are now only permitted in designated “demonstration areas” on weekday afternoons, and require two days’ notice to administrators. First-time violators receive warnings. Repeat violators are brought before a judicial board.
April 5, 2024: The university’s president announces the immediate suspension of multiple students accused of playing a role in organizing a March 24 event, “Resistance 101,” at which the presenters spoke openly in support of Hamas and other U.S.-designated terrorist organizations. The students were told they would be evicted from student housing.
April 17, 2024, 12:09 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Reporting from Capitol Hill
Representative Burgess Owens, Republican of Utah, is drilling down on an apparent double standard at Columbia. He suggests that it would not be tolerated for a moment if people called an attack on Black people “awesome” and “stunning” but that it has been acceptable for faculty to say about Jewish students for decades.
April 17, 2024, 12:02 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Reporting from Capitol Hill
Representative Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, is asking about a glossary given out at the School of Social Work that lists a term that appears to classify Jews as white, and therefore privileged. Shafik says it is not an official document. He also asks why the word "folks" is spelled "folx" in the document, a progressive quirk. "They can't spell?" Shafik says, getting an audience chuckle.
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April 17, 2024, 11:54 a.m. ET
Anemona Hartocollis
Reporting on education
Representative Gregorio Sablan, a Democrat from the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Island, seized on the fact that Shafik and other Columbia officials had been cut off, and offered them a chance to complete their answers. Shafik said that many of the questionable appointments “were made in the past in a different era, and that era is done.”
April 17, 2024, 11:51 a.m. ET
Anusha Bayya
Reporting from New York
Columbia University has been on strict lockdown all week, and today is no exception. Barricades have been erected, numerous police officers are stationed at both main entrances to the campus and no one is being allowed to enter without a Columbia University ID. Protesters have assembled today on Broadway wearing shirts with the words “Revolution Nothing Less!” on the front.
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April 17, 2024, 11:35 a.m. ET
Nicholas Fandos
Elise Stefanik has taken aim at college presidents on elite campuses.
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She may not be a committee chair, but perhaps no single Republican lawmaker has done more to exert pressure on elite universities since the Israel-Gaza war began than Representative Elise Stefanik of New York.
Ms. Stefanik was already a rising star within her party, the top-ranking woman in Republican House leadership and considered a potential presidential running mate when the House Education and Workforce Committee began investigating antisemitism on college campuses. But her grilling of the presidents of Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and M.I.T. at a December hearing became a defining moment.
Ms. Stefanik pressed the leaders to say whether students would violate their universities’ codes of conduct if they called for the genocide of Jews. Their dispassionate, lawyerly answers about context and free speech set off a firestorm that ultimately helped cost two of them, Claudine Gay of Harvard and Elizabeth Magill of the Penn, their jobs.
The exchange also helped win Ms. Stefanik widespread attention and rare plaudits from grudging liberals, who typically revile her for embracing former President Donald J. Trump and his lies about the 2020 election. On Wednesday, she was named one of Time’s 100 most influential people of 2024.
Ms. Stefanik is a graduate of Harvard herself. When she first won her seat in 2014, she was the youngest woman ever elected to the House of Representatives. She beat a centrist Democrat, and in the early days of her career, she took on more moderate stances.
These days, she describes herself as “ultra MAGA” and “proud of it.”
Ms. Stefanik, 39, has said she was “stunned” by the responses of the presidents during the last hearing. She plans to reprise that role on Wednesday, grilling the president of Columbia University, Nemat Shafik, and members of its board of trustees.
In an opinion piece in The New York Post before the hearing, Ms. Stefanik said antisemitism at Columbia had become “egregious and commonplace.” She charged Dr. Shafik with failing “to ensure Jewish students are able to attend school in a safe environment.”
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April 17, 2024, 11:14 a.m. ET
Anemona Hartocollis
Reporting on education
Shafik emphasizes that Columbia has ramped up disciplinary proceedings.
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In her opening remarks, Nemat Shafik, president of Columbia University, gave an idea of how pervasive complaints of antisemitism have become since Oct. 7, adding that Columbia had been aggressive in pursuing disciplinary action.
Dr. Shafik said that the disciplinary process at Columbia, which has about 5,000 Jewish students, typically handles 1,000 student-conduct cases a year. Most of those are related to typical campus infractions, such as academic dishonesty, the use of alcohol and illegal substances, and one-on-one student complaints.
“Today, student-misconduct cases are far outpacing last year,” said Dr. Shafik, who goes by Minouche.
She did not provide an exact number of complaints this year, and did not address what portion of the increase had to do with protests related to the Israel-Hamas war. But she implied that it was significant.
The university’s current policies were “not designed to address the types of events and protests that followed the Oct. 7 attack,” Dr. Shafik said.
The task of combating antisemitism provided a vehicle for underscoring why colleges and universities matter, she said. Antisemitism had been a scourge for some 2,000 years, she said. “One would hope that by the 21st century, antisemitism would have been related to the dustbin of history, but it has not.”
To deal with it, Dr. Shafik said, she would look toward periods “where antisemitism has been in abeyance.”
“Those periods were characterized by enlightened leadership, inclusive cultures and clarity about rights and obligations,” she said, adding that she was committed to fostering those values at Columbia.
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April 17, 2024, 10:47 a.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Reporting from Capitol Hill
Who are Claire Shipman and David Greenwald?
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Testifying alongside Nemat Shafik, the Columbia University president, are the two co-chairs of Columbia’s board of trustees, Claire Shipman and David Greenwald. Like Dr. Shafik, they are relatively new to their roles.
Ms. Shipman is a journalist and author who spent three decades working in television news for ABC, NBC and CNN, and who now writes books about women’s leadership and confidence. A graduate of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and Columbia College, she joined the board of trustees in 2013. She became co-chair in September.
Mr. Greenwald is a corporate lawyer who was chairman of the law firm Fried Frank before stepping down earlier this year. He has also worked as a deputy general counsel for Goldman Sachs. A graduate of Columbia Law School, he also serves on other nonprofit boards, including for NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. He was elected to the 21-member board in 2018, and become co-chair in September.
Both were on the presidential search committee, which oversaw the process of selecting Dr. Shafik.
David Schizer, a former dean of Columbia Law School and a co-chair of the school’s antisemitism task force, is also testifying. He was announced as an additional witness Monday.
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April 17, 2024, 10:40 a.m. ET
The New York Times
Read Nemat Shafik’s prepared opening remarks.
In her prepared opening statement, Nemat Shafik, the president of Columbia University, laid out ways the university has been responding to antisemitism on campus.
Read Document 7 pages
April 17, 2024, 10:34 a.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Reporting from Capitol Hill
Nemat Shafik is new to Columbia, but not to high-profile settings.
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Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, is no stranger to handling crises.
As a young economist at the World Bank, she advised governments in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. As a deputy managing director at the International Monetary Fund, she worked to stabilize national economies during the European debt crisis, and oversaw loans to Middle East countries during the uprisings of the Arab Spring.
Now, as the first female president of Columbia University, Dr. Shafik, who goes by Minouche, finds herself at the center of American political tensions over the war in Gaza and intense criticism over Columbia’s efforts to counter antisemitism.
Dr. Shafik’s supporters hope that her experience — and also what they describe as her cut-to-the-chase decision-making style — will help her navigate the kind of questioning that tripped up her peers from Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania in December.
Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Dr. Shafik’s family relocated to the United States in the 1960s after their home and property in Egypt were nationalized, she has said in interviews.
She lived in Savannah, Ga., as a child, and in Egypt as a teenager, returning to the United States to get her bachelor’s degree at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received her Ph.D. in economics from St. Antony’s College, at Oxford University.
After leaving the I.M.F. in 2014, she was a deputy governor of the Bank of England before returning to academia as president of the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2017. She started at Columbia in July. Her response to campus tensions sparked by the Israel-Hamas war has been her first big test.
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April 17, 2024, 10:28 a.m. ET
The New York Times
Read Representative Foxx’s opening remarks.
Virginia Foxx, who chairs the House Education and the Workforce Committee, listed the reasons for calling Wednesday’s hearing on campus antisemitism in her prepared opening remarks.
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