Columbia University President Minouche Shafik has resigned from her position amid a free speech debate over campus protests of the war in Gaza.
Ms Shafik’s resignation comes only a year after she took the position at the private Ivy League university in New York City, and just a few weeks before the autumn semester is due to begin.
In April, Ms Shafik authorised New York Police Department officers to swarm the campus, a controversial decision that led to the arrest around 100 students who were occupying a university building.
The episode marked the first time that mass arrests had been made on Columbia’s campus since Vietnam War protests more than five decades ago.
The move inflammed protests at dozens of colleges across the United States and Canada.
In an email to students and faculty on Wednesday, Ms Shafik wrote that she has overseen a “period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community”.
“This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community.”
Katrina Armstrong, chief executive officer of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, will serve as the interim president, according to the Columbia Spectator student newspaper.
Ms Shafik is now the third president of an Ivy League university to resign over her handling of Gaza war protests.
The leaders of Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology all testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
In April, Ms Shafik defended her institution’s efforts to tackle antisemitism to Congress, saying that there had been a rise in such hatred on campus and the college was working to protect students.
The presidents of Harvard and UPenn ultimately resigned amid backlash over their handling of campus protests and congressional testimony, facing questions such as whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” was against their university policies.
Students’ anger over how Israel is fighting its war against Hamas has raised fraught questions for university leaders, who are already struggling with combustive campus debates around what is happening in the Middle East.
US college campuses have been a flashpoint for Gaza war protests since Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, and Israel’s subsequent incursion into the Palestinian Gaza Strip.
Last week, three Columbia University deans resigned after text messages showed the group used “antisemitic tropes” while discussing Jewish students.
The text exchanges were originally published by the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce in early July.
Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, the chairwoman of the congressional committee, praised the decision by the three administrators to resign.
“About time. Actions have consequences,” she said in a statement on Thursday, adding that the decision should have been made “months ago”.
“Instead, the University continues to send mixed signals,” she continued, adding that that administration is allowing on dean who has not resigned to “slide under the radar with no real consequences.”
