The interim president of Columbia University is stepping down, the college announced Friday—one week after the institution agreed to a list of changes demanded by the Trump administration, which had canceled $400 million in federal funding.
Katrina Armstrong, who took on the role last summer, will remain at Columbia to lead its Irving Medical Center. She will be replaced by acting president Claire Shipman, a journalist and co-chair of the university’s board of trustees.
The Trump administration, having accused the university of permitting antisemitic behavior, lawless protests, and restricted speech, withheld the substantial sum from the school in exchange for, among other things, banning face masks, reviewing its admissions policies, having three dozen campus safety officers with the authority to make arrests, and creating an oversight body for its department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies.
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Those demands were widely criticized by free speech advocates, who have also cited with outrage the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestine activist and Columbia graduate student who is a lawful U.S. resident.
Other controversial arrests of university students have since taken place, including Tufts graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish citizen with a valid visa. Ozturk co-wrote an op-ed last year in the student newspaper calling on the university to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and divest from Israel-linked companies, among other things.
The federal government has claimed that Ozturk had “engaged in activities in support of” Hamas, which were “grounds for visa issuance to be terminated,” but has not specified what those activities were.
