Columbia President Claire Shipman Allegedly Tried to Replace a Jewish Board Member With an Arab One
“We need to get somebody from the middle east [sic] or who is Arab on our board”
A new development is coming to light which shows just how deep the rot is at Columbia University. Prior to assuming the role of acting president at the school, Claire Shipman allegedly felt that they needed to replace a Jewish board member with someone of Arab descent.
She apparently saw this as an urgent matter.
A prime example of how broken DEI really is:
Columbia President Claire Shipman tried to remove a Persian Jewish woman whose family were refugees of the Islamic Regime from the Board of Trustees in favor of “somebody from the Middle East or who is Arab.”
Yes, really. pic.twitter.com/yjoZfopRXO
— The Persian Jewess (@persianjewess) July 2, 2025
From the Washington Free Beacon:
Columbia President Claire Shipman Privately Said School Needed To Add an ‘Arab’ Board Member—and Remove a Jewish One
Before she became the acting president of Columbia University, Claire Shipman argued that the school needed to get an “Arab on our board” and suggested that a Jewish trustee should be removed over her pro-Israel advocacy, according to text messages obtained by the House Committee on Education and Workforce.
“We need to get somebody from the middle east [sic] or who is Arab on our board,” Shipman, then the co-chair of Columbia’s board of trustees, wrote in a message on January 17, 2024. “Quickly I think. Somehow.”
A week later, Shipman told a colleague that Shoshana Shendelman, one of the board’s most outspoken critics of campus anti-Semitism, had been “extraordinarily unhelpful,” adding, “I just don’t think she should be on the board.”
The messages were included in a letter sent to Columbia on Tuesday by committee chair Tim Walberg (R., Mich.) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., NY). Addressing Shipman by name, the committee requested “clarifications on the attached correspondence,” arguing that it appeared to downplay anti-Semitism on Columbia’s campus and could even violate civil rights law.
The remark about needing an Arab board member “raises troubling questions regarding Columbia’s priorities just months after the October 7th attack, which was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” they wrote. “Were Columbia to … appoint someone to the board specifically because of their national origin, it would implicate TItle VI concerns.”
And that’s not the end of the bad news for Columbia.
CBS News reports:
Columbia University formally notified its accreditation “may be in jeopardy.” Read the letter.
Columbia University was formally notified Monday that its accreditation is at risk.
A letter from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education to Columbia Acting President Claire Shipman serves to “warn the institution that its accreditation may be in jeopardy” because of “insufficient evidence that the institution is currently in compliance” with MSCHE’s standards on ethics and integrity.
This comes on the heels of the Education Department claiming the university had violated antidiscrimination laws, citing antisemitism on campus after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The school remains accredited while it is “on warning.”
Just two years ago, before the October 7th attacks, it would have been hard to imagine where we find ourselves now. The problems in American higher education are far worse than anyone suspected.
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Comments
Yank their accreditation and their federal funding. Destroy them and they wish to destroy us. I’m sure their real estate could be put to better use say as migrant housing.
And their non profit status.
Heck, make Columbia register as a foreign agent.
Great minds… I said the same thing over at Instapundit. 🙂
My channeling is Rustier than I thought it was.
Shipman would make a great addition to Mamdani’s administration.
If squinted at, this makes sense. The prime reason each of the board members have their positions is the river of cash they get from donors, and there is no larger river than the Arab oil money. If they don’t have an Arab member to go hobnob with Arab donors…
It may “make sense” and be rationalized from a slavishly obsequious Dhimmi-crat perspective, but, it’s still a despicable instance of yet more Jew-hate and dhimmitude at Columbia.
What good comes from Arabs? For a long time I thought the Crusades’ were meritless, until I looked further back in history, and found that Muslim aggression caused both the crusades’ and the dark ages. Arabs and their disreputable Islam are a huge threat to triggering a new dark age.
But that doesn’t excuse the comments about the Persian Jewish member being very unhelpful. Shipman’s job was to follow Board direction, not to opine on whether it was helpful to her personal goals or the goals of some group of which she was a member.
According to Persian Girl on X, the Jewish trustee Shipman wanted to get rid of is herself of Middle Eastern background, having been born in Iran. But she doesn’t like antisemitism which means she’s the wrong kind of Middle Eastern.
accelerating the demise of the western values that have created MORE FREEDOM THAN ANY OTHER SYSTEM…..EVER EVER EVER!!
lefty is a sickness where the vax is tough love
Wow I thought someone from Columbia would understand basic geography, such as Iran is part of the middle east. And yes, Iran was conquered and colonized by Islam but not fully Arabized and even today maintains it’s Persian ethnic majority with an Arab minority (among many others). OMG I guess only Arabs live in the middle east according to this moron? That’s news to the Mandeans, the Jews, the Copts, the Alawites, the Druze, the Kurds, the Yazidis, the Maronites, the Turks etc. etc. etc. I wonder if she can decolonize her mind from her own ignorance? Sounds like she just wanted a stooge on her board so she could have an echo chamber with no dissent.
She was a reporter for ABC. So despite the supposed education that might warrant, she’s still pretty much a vapid idiot.
I agree that explains it. A broad cast Journalism degree is not exactly lighting the world on fire now is it? Possibly the only thing easier is a psychology degree.
Certainly. She wants someone on the side of the ayatollahs. That’s the right kind of middle easterner. She shows her flexibility by also allowing an Arab, even though the ayatollahs despise them. I guess either would have been acceptable to the Qatari masters that most “top” universities now seem to answer to.
There is a dwindling number of approved applicants with Hamas CVs.
This period is necessary. It’s been this bad or worse for a long time, way before 10/7. The antisemitism was just hidden, gradual. Now it’s been forced out, forced to the surface. We’re much better off now, as well as we use the moment and defeat the enemy.
These messages from Shipman are gold. Don’t excuse any of it. Start revoking accreditations, let them try to earn it back.
.
This period is necessary too.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Long live the Oxford comma!
Formerly of CNN/ABC/NBC – Subgenius
A “journalist” and columbia background. No academic credentials. No reason to either be on the board of directors or president of columbia, acting or otherwise. Worse than a typical DEI appointment.
Not the best look considering the Univ is desperate to avoid loss of federal funding for failing to adequately protect Jewish Students or seemingly even care about the safety and ability of students to access education preferring to coddle ‘protesters’ instead of taking swift disciplinary action, much less assist LEO for criminal prosecution.
That should no longer even be at issue. Gone. I can hope anyway. Take away the funding, it will surely land in court. Let the games begin.
Anyway what are they worried about? Qatar can just write a check for the difference.
Only if we continue to allow foreign gov’t, foreign entities/individuals to influence our educational institutions and the culture/society downstream of it with what amounts to payola.
Note the dates involved. Early 2024, after Oct 7, but before the elections. This was back when the Left thought it would be in charge of everything forever.
Me and my wife went to college in the mid 70s in California. We ended up moving to the east coast with our sons due to business in 96 and found school was bad. When our sons finished HS in 04 and 05 neither decided on college and they chose on Trade Schools. Colleges have gotten worse and more costly.
Your sons certainly wouldn’t get an understanding of Western Civilization at any of the vast majority of colleges, but I hope they will make the effort to get it somewhere.
“Columbia President Claire Shipman Allegedly Tried to Replace a Jewish Board Member With an Arab One”
~Allegedly~? She apologized in writing for it. What’s with “allegedly”?
The Academic Bubble prevents pesky intrusions by realities, but money talks loud enough to penetrate eventually. Their ride on the gravy train is coming to an end soon. They will of course be the last to know, even though the evidence of this is abundant. Demographic declines in native enrollments can only be offset by aggressive foreign recruitment until this strategy backfires by fomenting insurrections that damage PR to such an extent that Federal support is withdrawn, and without those subsidies the engine of liberalism in Academia will sputter to a halt.
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