Texts: Columbia President Called to Add Arab, Remove Jew From Board

Columbia University's acting President Claire Shipman, before her promotion, last year sent messages suggesting that a Jewish member of the school's board of trustees should be removed and that the Ivy League school needed to get an "Arab on our board," according to text messages obtained by the House Committee on Education and Workforce.

Shipman's messages, sent while she was co-chairing the school's board of trustees, were included in a letter that the House committee's Chairman Tim Walberg, R-Mich., and Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., sent to Columbia on Tuesday, reports The Washington Free Beacon.

The letter, addressing Shipman by name, asked for clarification on the messages and argued that the communications appeared to downplay campus antisemitism and could be a violation of civil rights law.

In the first message, dated Jan. 17, 2024, Shipman wrote, "We need to get somebody from the middle east [sic] or who is Arab on our board," adding "Quickly I think. Somehow."

In a subsequent message a week later, Shipman told a colleague that Shoshana Shendelman, a board member and outspoken critic of antisemitism on campus, was "extraordinarily unhelpful" and added, "I just don't think she should be on the board."

Walberg and Stefanik wrote in their letter to Columbia that the remark about needing an Arab on the board "raises troubling questions regarding Columbia's priorities just months after the Oct. 7 attack, which was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust."

"Were Columbia to … appoint someone to the board specifically because of their national origin, it would implicate Title VI concerns," they added.

Further, they wrote that the exchanges on Shendelman "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."

Columbia commented to the Free Beacon that the messages had been 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," the school said in a statement. "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."

Columbia is entering into its fourth month of negotiations with the Trump administration, after the White House cut $400 million to the school over antisemitism on campus.

In April, former Columbia President Katrina Armstrong testified that she couldn't recall an incident from the school's report on antisemitism, but two months later, the Education Department notified Columbia's accreditor that the school was not in compliance with its standards on accreditation.

The school issued a response that it takes the issue "seriously and [was] continuing to work with the federal government to address it.

Meanwhile, the House committee members also mentioned, in their letter, a text message from December 2023 in which Shipman spoke about "the capital [sic] hill nonsense and threat."

"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," Walberg and Stefanik 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.'"

The letter also contained other messages concerning Shendelman, including last year, during an anti-Israel encampment, when Shipman told vice-chair Wanda Greene not to inform Shendelman about plans to negotiate with the protesters and claimed she was "fishing for information."