In a revelation that has intensified scrutiny over leadership at Columbia University, newly surfaced internal communications show that Claire Shipman—acting president and former chair of Columbia’s Board of Trustees—sought to sideline a Jewish board member who had publicly condemned antisemitism on campus, while simultaneously pushing to appoint an Arab board member amid anti-Israel demonstrations.
As reported by The Washington Free Beacon, Shipman’s emails and messages from early 2024 paint a troubling picture of backchannel maneuvering during a period of escalating antisemitic activity on campus following the October 7 Hamas attacks in Israel.
“We need to get somebody from the middle east [sic] or who is Arab on our board. Quickly I think. Somehow,” Shipman wrote on January 17, 2024.
Just days later, she targeted trustee Shoshana Shendelman, a vocal critic of campus antisemitism and an advocate for restoring order at Columbia. Shendelman, whose family fled Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, had been outspoken about the administration’s passive response to increasingly hostile anti-Israel protests.
Shipman labeled Shendelman “extraordinarily unhelpful” and suggested she “shouldn’t be on the board.”
By April, as negotiations between Columbia’s leadership and anti-Israel demonstrators intensified, Shipman allegedly instructed board vice-chair Wanda Greene to withhold information from Shendelman. In one exchange on April 22, Greene asked Shipman if she believed Shendelman was “a mole” or “a fox in the henhouse.”
Shipman’s reply was blunt: “I do.” Greene later added, “I’m tired of her,” to which Shipman responded, “So, so tired.”
The correspondence has now drawn congressional attention. On Tuesday, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Tim Walberg (R-MI) sent a letter demanding clarifications from Columbia. The letter questions the apparent effort to remove one of the board’s “most outspoken Jewish advocates” during a time when Columbia students “were facing a shocking level of fear and hostility.”
Stefanik also took to social media, stating: “Shipman downplayed and outright mocked those who sought to expose the disgusting culture of antisemitism on Columbia’s campus.”
The lawmakers further questioned why Shipman’s priority in the aftermath of the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust was to recruit an Arab board member while silencing Jewish voices raising legitimate concerns.
In response, Columbia University issued a brief statement claiming the communications were “provided to the Committee in the fall of 2024” and characterized them as “reflect[ing] a particularly difficult moment in time for the University.” The university did not dispute the content of the messages but argued they were being “published out of context.”
