Columbia president said school needed to add ‘Arab’ board member—and remove Jew

Columbia University dismissed the controversy over its internal messages, saying they were over a year old, taken out of context, and reflected a difficult period of crisis management.

By Aaron Sibarium, The Washington Free Beacon

Before she became the acting president of Columbia University, Claire Shipman argued that the school needed to get an “Arab on our board” and suggested that a Jewish trustee should be removed over her pro-Israel advocacy, according to text messages obtained by the House Committee on Education and Workforce.

“We need to get somebody from the middle east [sic] or who is Arab on our board,” Shipman, then the co-chair of Columbia’s board of trustees, wrote in a message on January 17, 2024. “Quickly I think. Somehow.”

A week later, Shipman told a colleague that Shoshana Shendelman, one of the board’s most outspoken critics of campus anti-Semitism, had been “extraordinarily unhelpful,” adding, “I just don’t think she should be on the board.”

The messages were included in a letter sent to Columbia on Tuesday by committee chair Tim Walberg (R., Mich.) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., NY).

Addressing Shipman by name, the committee requested “clarifications on the attached correspondence,” arguing that it appeared to downplay anti-Semitism on Columbia’s campus and could even violate civil rights law.

The remark about needing an Arab board member “raises troubling questions regarding Columbia’s priorities just months after the October 7th attack, which was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” they wrote.

“Were Columbia to … appoint someone to the board specifically because of their national origin, it would implicate Title VI concerns.”

The exchanges about Shendelman, they continued, “raise the question of why you appeared to be in favor of removing one of the board’s most outspoken Jewish advocates at a time when Columbia students were facing a shocking level of fear and hostility.”

In a statement to the Washington Free Beacon, Columbia claimed the messages had been taken out of context.

“These communications were provided to the Committee in the fall of 2024 and reflect communications from more than a year ago,” the school said.

“They are now being published out of context and reflect a particularly difficult moment in time for the University when leaders across Columbia were intensely focused on addressing significant challenges.”

Columbia declined to provide additional context for the messages on the record.

The release of the messages comes as Columbia enters its fourth month of negotiations with the Trump administration, which cut $400 million to the school in March over campus anti-Semitism.

The road to restoring those funds has been rocky: At a disastrous deposition in April, former Columbia president Katrina Armstrong told the government that she could not recall a single incident from the university’s own anti-Semitism report.

Two months later, the Education Department notified Columbia’s accreditor that the school was out of compliance with its accreditation standards, prompting the university to issue a statement on its commitment to “combating anti-Semitism.”

“We take this issue seriously and are continuing to work with the federal government to address it,” the school said.

The messages could upend that work at a time when the university is laying off scientists due to the Trump administration’s cuts.

They also offer a window into what Shipman, who has repeatedly pledged to follow the law, really thinks about the government’s efforts to enforce it—or, as she put it in a December 2023 text message, “the capital [sic] hill nonsense and threat.”

“Your reference to ‘capital [sic] hill nonsense’ is disturbing given Congress’s role in conducting oversight to ensure universities are fulfilling their obligations to protect Jewish students,” Walberg and Stefanik’s letter reads.

“Congress’s efforts to ensure the safety and security of Jewish students—who make up almost a quarter of your campus population—is not ‘capital [sic] hill nonsense.’”

Some of the most revealing messages concern Shendelman, the trustee Shipman said should be removed from the board.

At the height of the anti-Israel encampment last year, Shipman told vice-chair Wanda Greene to keep Shendelman in the dark about the school’s plans to negotiate with the protesters, claiming that she was “fishing for information” that could force the school’s hand as it resisted calling the police.

“Do you believe that she is a mole?” Greene asked on April 22, 2024. “A Fox in the henhouse?”

“I do,” Shipman replied.

While most faculty wanted to avoid a confrontation with law enforcement, Shipman explained, Shendelman was one of several trustees who felt it was time to restore order.

The school did not call police until activists occupied a campus building—and allegedly took a janitor hostage—more than one week later, resulting in dozens of arrests.

Greene and Shipman also expressed their personal dislike of Shendelman, a biotech executive whose family fled Iran during the Iranian Revolution.

“I’m tired of her,” Green texted. “So so tired,” Shipman responded.