Columbia College president steps down amid Trump’s crackdown

Columbia College’s interim president has resigned her position only one week after the Ivy League college agreed to alter a number of insurance policies to fulfill calls for from the Trump administration.

Katrina Armstrong had led the college since August, after the earlier president resigned over her dealing with of protests towards Israel’s army operation in Gaza.

Columbia has drawn ire from Donald Trump, who claims that it and different faculties have tolerated antisemitism and the harassment of Jewish college students.

Trump has already threatened to withhold some $400m (£309m) in federal funding for the college as his administration continues to focus on these concerned in campus protests with deportation.

Katrina Armstrong will return to her earlier position main’s Columbia’s medical centre, the college mentioned in a press release on Friday. She might be changed by Board of Trustees Co-Chair Claire Shipman, who the college mentioned would function appearing president.

“Dr Armstrong accepted the position of interim president at a time of nice uncertainty for the College and labored tirelessly to advertise the pursuits of our neighborhood,” David J Greenwald, chair of the college’s board of trustees, mentioned in a press release.

Within the college’s assertion, Mrs Shipman wrote: “I assume this position with a transparent understanding of the intense challenges earlier than us”.

She mentioned would “act with urgency” to advance the college’s mission and implement “wanted reforms”, together with defending its college students and uphold “educational freedom”.

Mrs Shipman, a journalist who beforehand labored for a number of US media retailers, added that when a brand new everlasting president has been chosen, they are going to oversee a evaluation of the college’s management “to make sure we’re finest positioned for the longer term”.

Final week, Columbia agreed to a number of calls for from the Trump administration, together with a ban on face masks at protests and a change in oversight of some educational programmes after the administration mentioned it deliberate to withhold thousands and thousands in federal funds.

It is unclear whether or not the funds might be reinstated, although a lawsuit was filed by among the college’s school over the cuts.

The New York school was the epicentre of pro-Palestinian protests on school campuses final yr towards warfare in Gaza and US assist for Israel.

It isn’t solely Columbia that has confronted funding cuts, the Trump administration has warned 60 universities that funding could also be cancelled if allegations of antisemitism on campuses are usually not addressed.

Earlier this month, the Secretary of Schooling introduced that it was pulling federal funding due to “relentless violence, intimidation, and antisemitic harassment” which went “ignored” by college authorities.

This all comes within the wake of a high-profile arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate and campus activist. He was detained by federal immigration authorities earlier this month.

Mr Khalil, a authorized everlasting US resident, faces deportation for his position within the 2024 campus protests.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly alleged that Mr Khalil, and different pro-Palestinian activists, assist Hamas, a gaggle designated a terrorist organisation by the US.

The 30-year-old’s legal professionals say he was exercising free speech rights to exhibit in assist of Palestinians in Gaza and towards US assist for Israel. They accused the federal government of “open repression of scholar activism and political speech”.