Before being named acting president of Columbia University, Claire Shipman suggested the school should replace a Jewish trustee on the board who criticized antisemitism on campus with an Arab member, according to text messages obtained by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
In a text message dated January 17, 2024, Shipman—then serving as co-chair of Columbia’s board of trustees—wrote, "We need to get somebody from the middle east [sic] or who is Arab on our board. Quickly, I think. Somehow."
Just one week later, Shipman expressed frustration with fellow trustee Shoshana Shendelman, one of the board’s most vocal critics of campus antisemitism. "I just don’t think she should be on the board," Shipman wrote, describing Shendelman as "extraordinarily unhelpful."
Shipman also advised Columbia’s vice-chair, Wanda Greene, to exclude Shendelman from plans to negotiate with radical activists on campus, claiming she was "fishing for information." In an April 22 exchange, Greene asked, "Do you believe that she is a mole? A fox in the henhouse?" Shipman replied, "I do."
Shendelman, whose family fled Iran during the Islamic Revolution, had pushed for stronger action to restore order on campus. The university did not involve police until pro-Hamas activists took over a campus building and allegedly held janitors hostage.
“I’m tired of her,” Greene texted. “So so tired,” Shipman responded.
These messages were included in a letter sent Tuesday by Committee Chair Tim Walberg (R-MI) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), requesting clarification from Columbia’s leadership and raising concerns about possible civil rights violations.
The letter noted that Shipman’s suggestion to appoint an Arab trustee—shortly after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel in which 1,200 people were massacred and over 200 were taken hostage—“raises troubling questions regarding Columbia’s priorities.” It warned that making board appointments based on national origin “would implicate Title VI concerns.”
Lawmakers also questioned the effort to marginalize Shendelman, writing: “Your comments 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 an October 30, 2023, WhatsApp message to then-university president Minouche Shafik, Shipman acknowledged campus unrest: “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.”
She proposed creating a task force to ease pressure on Shafik, who resigned in August 2024.
The committee criticized Shipman’s characterization of Jewish students’ concerns as irrational. “Your description—that people feel ‘somehow’ betrayed and that this is ‘not necessarily a rational feeling,’ but that it is ‘threatening’—is perplexing, considering the violence and harassment against Jewish and Israeli students already occurring on Columbia’s campus at the time,” the letter stated.
The revelations come amid escalating scrutiny of Columbia’s handling of antisemitism on campus in the wake of the Oct 7, 2023, Palestinian terror attacks against Israel. In March, the Trump administration cut $400 million in federal funding to the university. In April, then-president Katrina Armstrong admitted she could not recall a single incident from the university’s antisemitism report. Two months later, the Department of Education informed Columbia’s accreditor that the university was out of compliance with accreditation standards. The school has since begun laying off staff as a result of the funding cuts.
Shipman privately dismissed the federal investigation in a December 2023 text message, calling it "the capital [sic] hill nonsense and threat."
The committee strongly condemned that remark: “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. 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.’”
