The Universities Are Incorrigible | Power Line

Universities, especially “elite” universities, are under attack for systemic leftism, anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. When it comes to anti-Semitism, Columbia has been the eye of the hurricane, with buildings occupied and vandalized, illegal encampments allowed to persist, Jewish students bullied and harassed.

Columbia’s Interim President Katrina Armstrong, who ran Columbia during the riots in support of Hamas’s October 7 massacre, resigned a few days ago. I am not sure why. She reached an agreement with the Trump administration to crack down on terrorists in exchange for reinstatement of $400 million in federal funding, but then told faculty members she didn’t intend to abide by her agreement. I don’t know whether she resigned because she settled with the Trump administration, or because she privately repudiated her own agreement.

In any event, Armstrong’s departure gave Columbia an opportunity for a fresh start. A chance to bring in someone not associated with the riots, with Hamas, with vandalism, with anti-Semitism. But, instead of bringing in someone untarred by those events, Columbia has replaced Armstrong with Claire Shipman.

Shipman was co-chair of Columbia’s Board of Trustees during the anti-Semitic riots, so she is anything but a fresh face. On the contrary: she is on record as being contemptuous of efforts to counter campus anti-Semitism:

In a Dec. 28, 2023, text message, Shipman wrote to then university president Minouche Shafik she thought Columbia would be spared from the “capital hill nonsense,” referring to December 2023 Congressional hearings that saw the presidents of Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania and MIT testify about campus protests against the war in Gaza.

So not only is Shipman A-OK with anti-Semitic riots, she can’t spell, either. A typical liberal: arrogant but uneducated. And behind the scenes, she worked on behalf of pro-Hamas campus groups:

In the same text message, Shipman also suggested reinstating student groups that had participated in the protests.

“I do think we should think about unsuspending the groups before semester starts to take the wind out of that,” she wrote to Shafik.

Nor is that all. Shipman is an activist in the party that has brought anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism to our campuses:

Claire Shipman, a former CNN White House correspondent married to former Obama Administration press secretary Jay Carney….

Wonderful. A former CNN White House correspondent, whose husband was Obama’s press secretary, is now the Interim President of Columbia. How incestuous! These left-wingers are like the Bourbons: they have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing. Their institutions are paying the price.