After facing controversy and calls to resign over anti-Israel protests on campus, Columbia’s president has officially stepped down.

From The Washington Times. Columbia University President Minouche Shafik announced her resignation Wednesday following a turbulent inaugural year, her brief tenure marred by widespread criticism over her handling of the anti-Israel protests that rocked the Manhattan campus.

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Her resignation takes effect immediately.

Named as interim president was Katrina Armstrong, a physician who heads the university’s health and biomedical sciences campus and serves as chief executive officer of the medical center. …

Ms. Shafik, who assumed the presidency in July 2023, becomes the fifth Ivy League president to step down in the last year, and the third whose departure has been linked to the fallout from the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israelis and other civilians.

The massacre prompted Israel to declare war and spurred widespread pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. campuses.

Harvard President Claudine Gay stepped down in January, shortly after the resignation of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill. …

[Ms. Shafik] came under fire on the right for allowing a vast anti-Israel encampment to take root on campus, and then on the left for bringing in the New York Police Department in April to round up protesters who had barricaded Hamilton Hall.

“I have tried to navigate a path that upholds academic principles and treats everyone with fairness and compassion,” she said in her statement. “It has been distressing — for the community, for me as president and on a personal level — to find myself, colleagues, and students the subject of threats and abuse.” …

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(Excerpt from The Washington Times. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)