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Acting Columbia President Claire Shipman Reportedly Apologizes for Urging Ouster of Jewish Trustee

Acting Columbia University President Claire Shipman speaks during commencement ceremony on May 21, 2025. Photo: Jeenah Moon via Reuters Connect.

Columbia University interim president Claire Shipman has reportedly apologized for urging the replacement of a Jewish trustee with “an Arab” during the 2023-2024 academic year, a time when the school was being rocked by a rise in antisemitic incidents and militant anti-Israel activism on the campus.

At the time, Shipman served as the co-chair of Columbia’s board of trustees, a position which afforded her large influence over the direction of the university.

As first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, Shipman disparaged Jewish trustee Shoshana Shendelman, an outspoken critic of campus antisemitism, as “extraordinarily unhelpful” and a “mole” in a series of emails to board vice-chair Wanda Holland Greene and other colleagues.

“We need to get somebody from the middle east [sic] or who is Arab on our board,” wrote Shipman, who was selected in March to be the university’s fourth president since 2023.

“The things I said in a moment of frustration and stress were wrong,” Shipman said on Wednesday in a leaked email obtained by the Jewish Insider, the outlet reported. “They do not reflect how I feel. I have apologized directly to the person named in my texts, and I am apologizing now to you.”

“I have tremendous respect and appreciation for that board member, whose voice on behalf of Columbia’s Jewish community is critically important,” Shipman continued in the email “to several members of the campus community,” according to the news site. “I should not have written those things, and I am sorry. It was a moment of immense pressure, over a year and a half ago, as we navigated some deeply turbulent times. But that doesn’t change the fact that I made a mistake. I promise to do better.”

Lenny Gold, producer of the campus antisemitism documentary “The Blind Spot” called for Shipman’s resignation in a statement to The Algemeiner.

“It’s a sad, sobering reminder of the pervasiveness of the evil of indifference and ignorance at the highest levels of academia regarding the antisemitism faced by so many Jewish students on American campuses today, and how far we still must go to eradicate a prejudice that was unthinkable here not that long ago,” Gold said. “Shame on Ms. Shipman and Columbia if she doesn’t resign now.  There must be consequences for this behavior, as I assume there would be if it was aimed at any other group (or the member of any other group) protected by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

Shipman “was right to apologize,” said Jonathan Schulman, executive director of The Jewish Majority, a nonprofit which studies the Jewish experience in the US.

“Columbia University has a large, proudly pro-Israel Jewish student and alumni base,” Schulman told The Algemeiner. “Referring to a board member who reflects those values as a ‘mole,’ on the very same day that students could hear chants of ‘Long live the intifada,’ on campus, demonstrates a staggering insensitivity.”

Last month, Columbia University’s Task Force on Antisemitism released a “campus climate” survey which found that Jewish students remain exceedingly uncomfortable attending the institution.

According to its results, 53 percent of Jewish students said they have been subjected to discrimination because of being Jewish, while another 53 percent reported that their friendships are “strained” because of how overwhelmingly anti-Zionist the student culture is. Meanwhile, 29 percent of Jewish students said they have “lost close friends,” and 59 percent, nearly two-thirds, of Jewish students sensed that they would be better off by electing to “conform their political beliefs” to those of their classmates.

Nearly 62 percent of Jewish students reported “a low feeling of acceptance at Columbia on the basis of their religious identity, and 50 percent said that the pro-Hamas encampments which capped off the 2023-2024 academic year had an “impact” on their daily routines. Also, Jewish Columbia students are more likely than their peers to report these negative feelings and experiences.

Columbia University also recently settled a lawsuit brought by a Jewish student at the School of Social Work who accused faculty of unrelenting antisemitic bullying and harassment.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Acting Columbia President Claire Shipman Reportedly Apologizes for Urging Ouster of Jewish Trustee first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Trump Administration to Release Over $5 Billion School Funding That It Withheld

US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and President Donald Trump, in the East Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, March 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria

President Donald Trump’s administration will release more than $5 billion in previously approved funding for K-12 school programs that it froze over three weeks ago under a review, which had led to bipartisan condemnation.

“(The White House Office of Management and Budget) has completed its review … and has directed the Department to release all formula funds,” Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the U.S. Education Department, said in a statement, adding funds will be dispersed to states next week.

Further details on the review and what it found were not shared.

A senior administration official said “guardrails” would be in place for the amount being released, without giving details.

Early in July, the Trump administration said it would not release funding previously appropriated by Congress for schools and that an initial review found signs the money was misused to subsidize what it alleged was “a radical leftwing agenda.”

States say $6.8 billion in total was affected by the freeze. Last week, $1.3 billion was released.

After the freeze, a coalition of mostly Democratic-led states sued to challenge the move, and 10 Republican US senators wrote to the Republican Trump administration to reverse its decision.

The frozen money covered funding for education of migrant farm workers and their children; recruitment and training of teachers; English proficiency learning; academic enrichment and after-school and summer programs.

The Trump administration has threatened schools and colleges with withholding federal funds over issues like climate initiatives, transgender policies, pro-Palestinian protests against U.S. ally Israel’s war in Gaza and diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

Republican US lawmakers welcomed the move on Friday, while Democratic lawmakers said there was no need to disrupt funding in the first place.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon separately said she was satisfied with what was found in the review and released the money, adding she did not think there would be future freezes.

The post Trump Administration to Release Over $5 Billion School Funding That It Withheld first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Israel to Resume Airdrop Aid to Gaza on Saturday, Military Says

Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo

Israel will resume airdrop aid to Gaza on Saturday night, the Israeli military said, a few days after more than 100 aid agencies warned that mass starvation was spreading across the enclave.

“The airdrops will include seven pallets of aid containing flour, sugar, and canned food to be provided by international organizations,” the military added in a statement.

The post Israel to Resume Airdrop Aid to Gaza on Saturday, Military Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Trump Says Hamas ‘Didn’t Want to Make a Deal,’ Now Likely to Get ‘Hunted Down’

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 8, 2025. Photo: Kevin Lamarque via Reuters Connect.

i24 NewsUS President Donald Trump on Friday said the Palestinian jihadists of Hamas did not want to make a deal on a ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza.

“Now we’re down to the final hostages, and they know what happens after you get the final hostages. And basically because of that, they really didn’t want to make a deal,” Trump said.

The comments followed statements by Middle East peace envoy Steve Witkoff and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the effect that Israel was now considering “alternative” options to achieve its goals of bringing its hostages home from Gaza and ending the terror rule of Hamas in the coastal enclave.

Trump added he believed Hamas leaders would now be “hunted down.”

On Thursday, Witkoff said the Trump administration had decided to bring its negotiating team home for consultations following Hamas’s latest proposal. Witkoff said overnight that Hamas was to blame for the impasse, with Netanyahu concurring.

Trump also dismissed the significance of French President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement that Paris would become the first major Western power to recognize an independent Palestinian state.

Macron’s comments, “didn’t carry any weight,” the US leader said.

The post Trump Says Hamas ‘Didn’t Want to Make a Deal,’ Now Likely to Get ‘Hunted Down’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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