"We need to get somebody from the middle east [sic] or who is Arab on our board," Shipman wrote in one message on January 17, 2024. "Quickly I think. Somehow."
Things keep going from bad to worse at Columbia University, still reeling from pro-Hamas encampments, anti-Semitic harassment, and the government's efforts to deport student Mahmoud Khalil for his alleged role in creating havoc on campus in the name of the Palestinian movement. Now Acting President Claire Shipman is feeling the heat after the release of text messages she wrote in 2023-2024, months after October 7, 2023, attacking Shoshan Shendelman, a Jewish member of the Columbia Board of Trustees, and calling for an Arab to replace her. She also reportedly downplayed and mocked allegations of campus anti-Semitism. Shipman, a former journalist for CNN, NBC, and ABC, and ex-wife of Jay Carney, who served as press secretary in the Obama White House, has apologized in a letter to certain university officials and says her words during a period of frustration and stress do not reflect how she feels.
She promises to do better.
Here is the report from the Washington Free Beacon, which first broke the story.
And here is how the Columbia Spectator (campus newspaper) is reporting the mess. It also reports that Shipman was in favor of rolling back suspensions of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).
Just as an aside, I should add that in the same online edition, the paper is endorsing none other than Zohran Mamdani for New York City mayor. But I digress.
Of course, all this comes at a time when Columbia's accreditation has been under question by the Department of Education, $400,000,00 in federal funding was suspended by the Trump administration, and the university's reputation as a world-class university is in shatters. Shafik's resignation was followed by the interim presidency of Katrina Armstrong, who "distinguished" herself by apologizing to pro-Palestinian students who were affected by the above NYPD action. She was eventually replaced by Shipman, who has now added to the mess at Columbia.
It is pretty clear at this point that Shipman should resign or be replaced. She has continued the work of her predecessors in bringing disgrace to Columbia. Remember that this is the same university that has professors Rashid Khalidi (emeritus) and Joseph Massad on their faculty. These two so-called educators have done as much, if not more, than any other professor in the country to stir up anti-Jewish feeling on campus as part of their pro-Palestinian advocacy. In recent years, Columbia has arguably been the most hostile campus in the country for Jewish students. That's saying a lot given the sheer number of universities affected by this wave of anti-Jewish hate masquerading as promoting the Palestinian cause.
Columbia desperately needs new leadership. Shipman must go.
2 comments:
Columbia is finished and should be merged with Cornell, so the
libraries would not be offsite to make room for more grant grubber
think tanks. LBO their debt (Tickers: COLUNIV, CNDAX). If the
professors had corporate grants they would be better able to find
their students real jobs instead of lobbying for more government
grants. Columbia was radicalized by Mickey Soviet instigating the
1968 riots so his fellow Trotskites could grub for grants. Obama came
to Columbia because of the 1968 riots and Bollinger repeatedly praised
the 1968 riots. Many of the rioters are now on the faculty. The
foreign students dominate not only because they pay full cash tuition,
it is because (Surely Joking Feynman) foreign students expect LESS of
their professors and are willing to do immoral things on behalf of
their grants. So the professors go out of their way to say foreign
students are better. The USA has excelent elite schools, although it
also had mediocre ones. But Columbia pulls in students from some of
the best high schools in America. Students from Stuyvesant, Bronx
Science and elite suburban and private schools often graduate college
while still teens and have done so for a century, which is why they
needed to put returning military draftees to a separate "adult"
college.
There is a lot to digest there, but I would add that aside from the intellectual rot that exists in places like Columbia, there is way too much money involved in our universities. The grants, the donations from rich alumni, the $$$ coming from places like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and China, are basically buying influence into what is taught. The salaries of professors, adminiistrators etc are in the 6 figures. I don't begrudge someone making big bucks honestly, but I question why tuitions are so high, and it seems apparent that a lot of high salaries have to be supported by higher tuitions.
In addition, the University of California-when I was at UC Irvine- changed their admissions to policy to bring in more foreign and out of state students because they paid more in tuition. They even called it "revenue enhancement" as I recall. The obvious result is that California students were squeezed out even though their families were paying taxes to support the UC system.
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