Claire Shipman, who now serves as Columbia University’s acting president, allegedly pushed to add an Arab representative to the school’s board of trustees and privately expressed opposition to keeping a Jewish trustee due to her pro-Israel views, according to internal communications reviewed by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
“We need to get somebody from the middle east [sic] or who is Arab on our board,” Shipman wrote in a WhatsApp message on January 17, 2024. “Quickly I think. Somehow.”
A week later, she criticized trustee Shoshana Shendelman, a vocal opponent of anti-Israel protests on campus, telling colleagues she had been “extraordinarily unhelpful.” Shipman added, “I just don’t think she should be on the board.”
These conversations were revealed in a letter sent Tuesday by Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to Shipman, obtained first by The Washington Free Beacon. The lawmakers asked Shipman to explain the exchanges, which they said “raise troubling questions regarding Columbia’s priorities just months after the October 7th attack, which was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” and flagged possible violations of civil rights law.
The letter noted that if Columbia were to appoint someone to the board “specifically because of their national origin,” the action could “implicate Title VI concerns.”
The documents also detail how, during the pro-Palestinian encampment on Columbia’s campus in 2024, Shipman warned vice-chair Wanda Greene not to engage with Shendelman, whom she claimed was probing for information. “Do you believe that she is a mole?” Greene asked on April 22. “A Fox in the henhouse?” Shipman responded, “I do.”
The Free Beacon reported that Shendelman was among the trustees who urged university leadership to restore order by bringing in law enforcement. Columbia ultimately delayed police involvement until after protesters occupied a building and allegedly held a janitor hostage, leading to dozens of arrests.
During the crisis, Shendelman went to campus to retrieve her daughters and their friends, who were unable to leave Butler Library because of the protest. In a subsequent trustees call, she described the ordeal, but her concerns were allegedly brushed aside. Shipman appeared to reference the incident when writing, “And like driving to campus and loading people into a suv. I just don’t know.”
Other messages revealed further disdain for Shendelman. Greene wrote, “I’m tired of her.” To which Shipman replied, “So so tired.” Shendelman is a biotech CEO whose family escaped Iran during the 1979 revolution.
Lawmakers homed in on the comments about Shendelman, questioning why Shipman appeared eager to oust “one of the board’s most outspoken Jewish advocates at a time when Columbia students were facing a shocking level of fear and hostility.”
A Columbia University spokesperson told Breitbart News the correspondence was being 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. 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,” the statement said.
The spokesperson added, “This work is ongoing, and to be clear: Columbia is deeply committed to combating antisemitism and working with the federal government on this very serious issue, including our ongoing discussions to reach an agreement with the Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism. Acting President Claire Shipman has been vocally and visibly committed to eradicating antisemitism on campus; the work underway at the university to create a safe and welcoming environment for all community members makes that plain.”
Following publication of the committee’s findings, The New York Post obtained an email Shipman reportedly sent to close contacts, in which she took responsibility for her words. “Let me be clear: The things I said in a moment of frustration and stress were wrong,” Shipman wrote. “They do not reflect how I feel… It was a moment of immense pressure, over a year and a half ago, as we navigated some deeply turbulent times. But that doesn’t change the fact that I made a mistake.”
She also claimed to have offered a personal apology to Shendelman: “I have tremendous respect and appreciation for that board member, whose voice on behalf of Columbia’s Jewish community is critically important. I should not have written those things, and I am sorry.”
In response, Shendelman told Breitbart News, “The cavalier attitude towards student safety and the casual cruelty that is captured within the texts don’t leave much to interpretation and is understandably alarming to parents of college students nationwide. I can’t control what others do, but I will do my best to change things in a positive way for the sake of our students, our universities and our nation. I will continue to lead by example – to work hard and to do the right thing with moral clarity.”
The committee also included a December 2023 message in which Shipman dismissed congressional scrutiny. Writing to then-president Minouche Shafik, she referred to “the capital [sic] hill nonsense”—presumably referencing Shafik’s testimony before lawmakers investigating campus antisemitism.
“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,” the committee wrote. “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.’”
In another exchange dated October 30, 2023, Shipman acknowledged concerns from the Jewish community but seemed to downplay their validity: “people are really frustrated and scared about antisemitism on our campus and they feel somehow betrayed by it. Which is not necessarily a rational feeling but it’s deep and it is quite threatening.”
The committee criticized this description as dismissive, especially “considering the violence and harassment against Jewish and Israeli students already occurring on Columbia’s campus at the time.”
Reacting to Columbia’s claim that the messages were taken out of context, Rep. Walberg pushed back forcefully. “Two years ago, college and university administrators famously stated ‘it depends on the context’ to defend their lack of response to antisemitism on their campuses. Now, Columbia University is using this tired practice of blaming ‘context’ for their acting president’s questionable texts and emails,” he told Breitbart News. “Americans are smarter than these institutions seem to think and can see through this overused line.”
The disclosures come as Columbia tries to recover from a loss of $400 million in federal funding, which the Trump administration revoked in March, citing the university’s failure to protect Jewish students from harassment. In June, federal officials also alleged that Columbia was out of compliance with accreditation requirements and in violation of anti-discrimination laws.
Shipman has reportedly accepted some of the administration’s conditions to restore funding, including a campus mask ban and authorization for university police to detain and remove students as needed, according to The New York Post.
In a private letter, Shipman wrote that Columbia is “committed to restoring our critical partnership with the federal government as quickly as possible, so that thousands of our faculty and researchers and students can get back to the essential work they do on behalf of humanity.”

{Matzav.com}