Columbia president Katrina Armstrong steps down, marking second shake-up since 2024

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The interim president of Columbia University, Katrina Armstrong, will step down from her current role and return to lead the university’s medical center, the school’s board of trustees announced on Friday.

“Dr Armstrong accepted the role of interim president in a time of great uncertainty for the university and worked tirelessly to promote the interests of our community,” wrote David J. Greenwald, chairman of the Columbia Board of Trustees, in a statement. ‘Katrina always gave her heart and soul to Columbia. We appreciate her service and look forward to her continued contributions to the university. ‘

Armstrong’s exit comes at a turbulent time for the university.

Last week, Columbia agreed to implement a series of livestock changes to regain potential access to $ 400 million to federal financing. The Trump administration threatens to withhold the allegations that the school has not done enough to combat anti-Semitism amid pro-Gaza protests.

The changes include building up a new police force on campus, partially ban on face masks and the removal of faculty control over the Department of Middle East, South Asian and African studies.

Academics inside and outside the university have widely condemned the move as an unprecedented capitulation to the outside influence.

Leadership change is the latest upheaval at Columbia, which has experienced large -scale protests and threats of lost financing over the past few years

In addition to the threat of financing, Columbia was also the center of the administration’s suppression of non-citizen student activists who participated in the 2023 and 2024 campus Pro-Palestine protests amid the Israeli-Hamas war.

The first reported immigration arrest of the campaign was that of green cardholder Mahmoud Khalil, a recent degree in Columbia and student activist who was initially detained in an apartment building in the university earlier this month. He challenges his detention in court and claims to be punished for exercising his constitutionally protected free speech rights.

The co-chair of the Council of Trustees, Claire Shipman, a journalist and alumnus in Columbia, has been appointed acting president, as the school continues with a leadership search.

Armstrong is the second person who leaves the best track in Columbia within 12 months.

Minouche Shafik, an economist and former World Bank official, resigned in 2024, to a tenure that included large -scale campus marches with a campus and students who occupied a university building, as well as accusations to tolerate anti -Semitism.

Shafik came for criticism from some students for allowing multiple large-scale police operations against protesters on campus, the first since the war in Vietnam.

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