Embattled Columbia names Indian Springs alumna as interim president

Katrina Armstrong, M.D. Photo by Jörg Meyer/Columbia University.

As Columbia University continues to be a battleground for anti-Israel activism over the war against Hamas in Gaza, the university named an interim president with Alabama ties.

Following the resignation of Minouche Shafik, who served as president for the last 13 months, Katrina Armstrong was named interim president.

Armstrong is a 1982 graduate of Indian Springs School, a private high school just south of Birmingham. In 2022, she was the school’s Alumna of the Year, and earlier this year hosted a gathering of young alumni in the New York area.

“Katrina is well-known to the Columbia community,” wrote David Greenwald and Claire Shipman, co-chairs of the Trustees of Columbia University. “She has transformed the health sciences at Columbia.”

Armstrong serves in three other positions at Columbia since arriving in 2022: She is CEO of the school’s Irving Medical Center, serves as executive vice president for Columbia’s Health and Biomedical Sciences, and is the Harold and Margaret Hatch Professor.

Greenwald and Shipman wrote that Armstrong “has distinguished herself as a physician, investigator, teacher and leader with a unique ability to listen actively to all voices, incorporate lessons from across disciplines, advance innovative teaching that positions learners of all backgrounds for success, and bring together teams from across communities to work together toward a common purpose.”

Armstrong’s recent research examined health disparities in rural areas, an effort that included partnerships with Lakota tribal communities and groups in South Dakota. She has also focused on exploring the challenges to mental health in the United States.

In her first presidential statement to the university, Armstrong acknowledged the recent challenges the school had seen and her faith they could be overcome.

“I am acutely aware of the trials the university has faced over the past year. We should neither understate their significance, nor allow them to define who we are and what we will become,” she wrote. “Never has it been more important to train leaders capable of elevating society and addressing the complexity of modern life. Columbia University has a long history of meeting the moment, and I have faith that we will do so once again.”

After graduating from Indian Springs, Armstrong received her bachelor’s degree in architecture from Yale University, a doctor of medicine from Johns Hopkins University, and a master’s degree in clinical epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania, where she began her academic career.

She served in numerous positions at Penn, including physician-scientist fellow, professor, chief of general internal medicine, associate director of the Abramson Cancer Center, co-director of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, and director of research at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics.

In 2013, she became the first woman to serve as physician-in-chief at Mass General, Harvard’s teaching hospital, and became chair of Harvard’s department of medicine. Her first day there was during the Boston Marathon, where two bombs were detonated near the finish line. Over three dozen people who were injured in the blasts wound up at Mass General that day.

At Mass General, she founded the Center for Educational Innovation and Scholarship.

While protests and encampments over Gaza roiled the Columbia campus in the past year, in her medical role Armstrong was mainly on the sidelines. The Forward reported that on Oct. 9, she had a statement, co-signed by the deans of Columbia’s schools of nursing, public health and dentistry, calling on students to “come together and to embrace each other with compassion and empathy.”

While the statement said “the terrible violence and loss of life we witnessed over the weekend following deadly attacks on Israel leave every one of us shaken and deeply concerned about the days ahead,” it did not mention Hamas or call Oct. 7 a terror attack, a common omission that led to condemnation from pro-Israel leaders.

On Nov. 2, she referenced the conflict in remarks welcoming colleagues to a medical school summit on diversity, equity and inclusion. There, she noted the “basic facts” that Hamas was a terrorist organization.

She added, “We must describe Hamas as it describes itself — as an entity openly committed to the destruction of Israel and to attacking the Jewish people — to provide our Jewish colleagues the comfort that comes with knowing that others understand what occurred on October 7 and the terrible psychological impact of that terrorist attack.”

Posting the speech to the medical school website, Armstrong noted that “while antisemitism is a priority topic for any DEI summit, it has now taken on a pressing sense of urgency and requires a deep commitment across the University.” She also referred to the “humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

In April, she again co-signed a letter by the deans of Columbia’s schools of nursing, public health and dentistry, this time about the importance of freedom of speech. It also repudiated the “hateful language, calls for violence and the targeting of any individuals or groups based on their beliefs, ancestry, religion, gender identity or any other identity or affiliation.”

Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia/Barnard Hillel, told Jewish Insider that Armstrong is a “strong leader” who has always been responsive to issues he has brought up.

The university has not said how long she will be in the interim position.

Shafik, in her resignation statement, said “I have tried to navigate a path that upholds academic principles and treats everyone with fairness and compassion. 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.”

She has taken a new position with the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom at a time when Britain’s new government is distancing itself from Israel.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations called on Armstrong to “protect the free speech rights of students, meaningfully engage with students regarding their reasonable demands, and take steps to sever the university’s financial relationship with human rights abusers.”

CAIR “welcomed” the resignation of Shafik, who they said “called on law enforcement to disband diverse and largely peaceful protests against the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza and Columbia’s alleged financial connections to the Israeli government.” They added that the New York Police Department’s “violent” crackdown on an encampment led to the activists occupying and renaming a university building.

Even with the resignation, on Aug. 18 anti-Israel activists gathered outside Shafik’s apartment, screaming obscenities at her. A week earlier, activists painted Hamas symbols and released crickets and mealworms at the building where the university’s chief operating officer lives.

On X, CU Apartheid Divest stated “It doesn’t matter who you replace Shafik with, our demands remain the same. Columbia must divest. We will not stop. We will not rest. We are committed to a Free Palestine within our lifetime.”

On Aug. 21, Columbia University was subpoenaed by the federal government for documents related to an investigation into campus antisemitism.

“The committee today issues a subpoena due to Columbia’s repeated failure to fulfill priority requests by deadlines that elapsed prior to your accession to the university’s presidency,” Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina wrote to Armstrong.

“While the committee must move forward with compulsory process as previously indicated, we sincerely hope that Columbia’s new leadership will result in increased cooperation,” Foxx added.

Per the subpoena, Armstrong must appear before the committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Sept. 4 at noon.

University administrators “have slow-rolled the investigation, repeatedly failing to turn over necessary documents,” Foxx said, showing “a continued pattern of negligence towards antisemitism and a refusal to stand up to the radical students and faculty responsible for it.”

Some of the documents in question are related to a misinformation campaign where anti-Israel activists claimed they had been sprayed with army-grade chemical weapons, when in reality it was a counter-protestor using “fart spray” available on Amazon; whether student leader Khymani James, who was banned from campus after posting a video saying “Zionists don’t deserve to live” was indeed expelled or is back on campus; and regarding Professor Joseph Massad, who called Oct. 7 “astounding” and “awesome.”

Additionally, of the 22 students arrested for the takeover of Hamilton Hall in April, 18 remained in good standing, three received interim suspensions, and one earned probation, which Foxx characterized as a “white flag in surrender” and “a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

A week before Shafik’s resignation, three Columbia deans resigned over controversial text message exchanges where they mocked Jewish and pro-Israel students while attending a May 31 panel on campus antisemitism. The texts dismissed claims of antisemitism, suggested the controversy was being exploited for “fundraising potential” and questioned whether Jewish students were actually being kicked out of student groups. They also used vomit emojis in response to some of the speakers.

Meanwhile, for the first time in over 20 years, the prestigious Jewish high school Ramaz on the Upper East Side does not have a graduate going to the college at Columbia, the New York Post reported. One is attending the School of General Studies and three are going to Barnard College, which is a women’s college affiliated with Columbia. According to the school, the atmosphere at Columbia was a factor.

From SJL and JNS reports