Columbia College’s interim president Katrina Armstrong will step down from her present position and return to guide the college’s medical heart, the varsity’s board of trustees introduced Friday.
“Dr. Armstrong accepted the position of interim president at a time of nice uncertainty for the College and labored tirelessly to advertise the pursuits of our neighborhood,” David J. Greenwald, chair of the Columbia Board of Trustees, wrote in an announcement. “Katrina has all the time given her coronary heart and soul to Columbia. We recognize her service and sit up for her continued contributions to the College.”
Armstrong’s exit comes at a tumultuous time for the college.
Final week, Columbia agreed to implement a sequence of sweeping adjustments to win again potential access to $400 million in federal funding the Trump administration is threatening to withhold over allegations the varsity hasn’t completed sufficient to fight antisemitism amid pro-Gaza protests.
The adjustments embrace build up a brand new campus police drive, partially banning face masks, and eradicating school management over the division of Center East, South Asian and African Research.
Teachers inside and out of doors the college extensively condemned the transfer as an unprecedented capitulation to exterior affect.
Along with the funding risk, Columbia has additionally been on the heart of the administration’s crackdown on non-citizen student activists who took half within the 2023 and 2024 campus pro-Palestine protests amid the Israel-Hamas battle.
The primary extensively reported immigration arrest of the marketing campaign was that of inexperienced card-holder Mahmoud Khalil, a latest Columbia grad and pupil activist who was initially detained at a university-owned house constructing earlier this month. He’s challenging his detention in courtroom, alleging he’s being punished for exercising his constitutionally protected free speech rights.
Board of Trustees co-chair Claire Shipman, a journalist and Columbia alum, has been appointed appearing president as the varsity continues a management search.
Armstrong is the second individual to go away the highest job at Columbia within the span of 12 months.
Minouche Shafik, an economist and former World Financial institution official, resigned in 2024, following a tenure that included large-scale campus protests that includes an encampment and college students occupying a college constructing, in addition to accusations of tolerating antisemitism.
Shafik got here in for criticism from some college students for permitting a number of large-scale police operations in opposition to protesters on campus, the primary since Vietnam Battle protests.
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