Rep. Burgess Owens responds to Columbia University president’s resignation

After months of unrest on its New York City campus, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik announced Wednesday she is stepping down in a letter to the college community.
Her resignation comes amid continued questions over the antisemitism and unrest stirred up on college campuses, including at Columbia University, following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
“This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community,” Shafik said in the letter. “Over the summer, I have been able to reflect and have decided that my moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead.”
Shafik stepped into the role two years ago, becoming the Ivy League university’s first female president. But during that short time, she received scrutiny over the encampments and on-campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war. Criticism from Republicans on the House Education Committee, which Utah Rep. Burgess Owens is a part of, heightened calls for her to resign.
Shafik, who was born in Egypt, previously served as the president of the London School of Economics and Political Science and the vice president of the World Bank. She described navigating through campus tension as “distressing” for herself as well as the Columbia community.
“This drastic escalation of many months of protest activity pushed the university to the brink, creating a disruptive environment for everyone and raising safety risks to an intolerable level,” she said. “It is going to take time to heal, but I know we can do that together.”
Owens, R-Utah, said Shafik’s latest move was “inevitable after her disastrous testimony” in April in front of the House Education and the Workforce Committee.
“This is what accountability looks like. Our universities need stronger leadership and the moral clarity to call out hate and evil,” he said.
At the April hearing, Owens asked Shafik pointed questions about the root causes of unrest on campus.
“I grew up in the Deep South in the 1960s, days of KKK, Jim Crow and segregation,” Owens said. He was 16 when he had his first experience with white Americans, he said, and was the third Black athlete to receive a scholarship to play football at the University of Miami.
“Members of my race were harassed by KKK bigots, marked … spit upon, hit with a stick, ostracized,” Owens said, at an April hearing. “These same bigots and racists (are) allowed to protest at Columbia’s campus, spewing anti-Black hate speech.”
He asked Shafik if the university would force students to attend a class taught by a tenured professor who talks about these events in the past “in glowing terms.” Shafik said it would neither be tolerated nor be acceptable.
Owens alleged Columbia University’s core values revolve around beliefs like African Americans are an “oppressed race that needs protection and pity of the white race,” as well as antisemitic ideas that the Jewish race is oppressive and that “minorities need to be protected from them.”
“If you ever wonder why the heinous crimes of October 7 never move the needle of empathy at Columbia, this is why,” the Utah congressman said.
He cited a statement from a Jewish student at Columbia University. “It’s impossible to exist as a Jewish student at Columbia without running face first into antisemitism every single day,” the student said, according to Owens. “Jew hatred is so deeply embedded into the campus culture, it’s become casual among students, faculty, and neglected by administrators.”
Shafik said she met with the students and held listening sessions. “I believe in leadership by presence and walking around, and I have listened to those students and it has distressed me hugely,” she said at the time.