Who is Claire Shipman, the new interim president of Columbia?

In Capitol Hill last April, Claire Shipman, then a blanket of the Columbia University Foundation Council, testified Who agreed that there was a “moral crisis in our campus”, with students and members of the faculty acting in unacceptable ways that threatened Jewish and Israeli students.

“I can clearly tell you that I am not satisfied with where Columbia is located right now,” he said in an audition on the anti -Semitism campus.

Now, it will have even more opportunities to face the situation. Friday, Mrs. Shipman, 62, author and former television journalist, was high To become the interim president of Columbia, remaining in the role until a search for a permanent president is completed.

Mrs. Shipman is taking the helm in a moment of significant danger for the establishment of 271 years. The Trump administration cut $ 400 million In Columbia Federal Research Friends, mainly in the Health Sciences, due to what has described as the inability of the school to protect Jewish students from harassment. To recover the money, the White House asks for a series of reforms From Columbia, including a ban on masks that aim to hide identity, more rigorous rules on where and when protests can take place and the external supervision of the University’s Middle Eastern studies department.

The federal officers of the Agency for the application of immigration and customs have detained or attempted to retain several current or former students of Columbia in recent weeks, including Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the Filo-Palestinese movement of the school that holds a green card and is married to an American citizen.

Katrina Armstrong, who on Friday resigned from the university interim president of the University, had undertaken to meet the conditions of the Trump administration for a return of the loan. But the written promises Columbia did, although vastly, did not go to the government’s requests, and Dr. Armstrong faced criticism last week for they seem to minimize The changes in a meeting of the faculty, a transcription whose transcription was leaked to the media.

Mrs. Shipman will face the same complicated balance law, while trying to appease federal requests while dealing with a robust student protest movement and a strong -willed faculty dedicated to the protection of her academic freedom from Washington’s interference.

Victor Mendelson, a member of the Columbia Board of Trustes, declared away and -mail on Saturday that the board of directors was “absolutely behind Claire in his new role”.

“Claire is a special person who is able to bring people and bridge divide,” said Mendelson. “He is patient and understanding. Working with her was one of the highlights of my advice and I am excited that it is our interim president.”

On the campus, however, the news of the sudden departure of Mrs. Armstrong, with an immediate effect, led to swirling speculations about why it had suddenly happened, as well as questions about why a member of the Council had been made the provisional president rather than a member of the faculty or an expert administrator.

“It is worrying that, like President Shafik, this is a person whose professional career was not done in the Academy,” said Michael Thaddeus, mathematical of Columbia, referring to Nemat Shafik, a former president who resigned last August. “Claire Shipman is not really full time in a university since she graduated in Columbia.”

On the other hand, he said, this was a position of actor that the members of the faculty presume “will not last so long”. He said he hoped that the presidential research committee was consulted with members of the faculty and students while looking for the right person for the permanent place.

Mrs. Shipman grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and entered Columbia College as a second year. When she arrived in New York, she told Congress, she was “a financial help student with little sense for school, the city or the world”.

Columbia has changed it. She graduated in Russian studies, graduating in 1986, as one of the first lessons of Columbia College You include women. He continued at the School of International and Public Affairs of Columbia to continue university studies on the field.

He obtained his first large break when he obtained a six -month internship in the Moscow office of the CNN shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union, He told a Columbia Alumni magazine In a wide -ranging interview in 2002. From there, she moved constantly to the ranks, working in Moscow before moving to Washington to cover Clinton’s White House for the CNN and then the NBC.

Bruce Conover, a former colleague of Mrs. Shipman at the Moscow Bureau of the CNN, described it as “steel under delicate”. Mrs. Shipman said, she distinguished himself in the pregnancy office at the beginning as an intelligent and empathic colleague and journalist led equally by ambition and compassion.

“He was very good at talking to people at their level on what he concerned them, in a way that I think he would verify, as if they had something valid to share,” said Conover.

In the Middle East for the assignment, he said, Mrs. Shipman showed a sensitivity to complicated issues and an understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which he believed he would help in his new role.

“I think he will desperately look for a strategy that preserves funding for research and financing that allows the school to move forward and continue his traditions,” he balanced the importance of freedom of speech, said.

Mrs. Shipman moved to ABC around 2001, where she became corresponding and collaborator of “Good Morning America”. At the end of the 90s, according to the magazine Alumni, he married Jay Carry, who was the press secretary of President Barack Obama from 2011 to 2014. The divorced couple has two children, according to a spokesman for Columbia.

Mrs. Shipman joined the Columbia Foundation Council in 2013 and became covered in 2023. Now it hires what could be one of the most difficult works in the academic world, while dr. Armstrong returns to his former place as head of the University Medical Center.

“I suppose this role with a clear understanding of the serious challenges in front of us,” said Mrs. Shipman in a declaration on Friday, “and a constant commitment to act urgently, integrity and work with our faculty to advance our mission, implement the necessary reforms, protect our students and support academic freedom and open investigation.”

Sheelagh McNeill Research contribution.