As former Columbia University president Minouche Shafik, who stepped down Wednesday, appeared before Congress last spring, students were executing a secret plot — pitching tents on main campus to pressure the administration to divest from Israel.
Thirty hours later, Shafik would call the police to clear the pro-Palestinian encampment, touching off weeks of around-the-clock protests in and around Morningside Heights. Politicians from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to members of progressive congressional group the Squad descended on campus — as did the founder of the far-right Proud Boys — while a media frenzy kicked into gear.
But further north, on Columbia’s medical campus in Washington Heights, there was some activity, though not at the same scale. And now, trustees have tapped interim president Dr. Katrina Armstrong, the chief executive officer of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center — an insider with some perceived distance from events that roiled the main campus last spring — to take the reins from Shafik.
“As I step into this role, I am acutely aware of the trials the University has faced over the past year,” Armstrong wrote in an email to students and faculty. “We should neither understate their significance, nor allow them to define who we are and what we will become.”
Armstrong, an Alabama native, joined Columbia in 2022 as its executive vice president for health and biomedical sciences, and dean of the medical school. She steps into the top post during a period of extraordinary upheaval for the storied Ivy League college while it continues to reckon with the fallout of last semester’s pro-Palestinian protests — and the prior administration’s response.
Columbia spokespeople declined to make her available for interviews.
“We’re right now in a highly politicized environment the university presidents and other leaders, like provost, are definitely feeling,” said H. Kenny Nienhusser, a Columbia alum and associate professor of higher education at the University of Connecticut.
“The Hamas-Israeli war is still ongoing. The U.S. presidential elections in the fall are absolutely going to be impacting colleges and university leaders,” he added. “This politicized environment is not going away at all.”
While some students have vowed to continue their demonstrations until Columbia divests, others in the Columbia community welcomed the university’s new leadership.
“I have worked a bit with Dr. Armstrong in the last year, especially when issues of concern to the Jewish community occasionally came up at the medical center,” said Brian Lavine, executive director of the campus Hillel. “This will be a challenging semester at Columbia, but I look forward to working with Dr. Armstrong to address the challenges.”
Armstrong graduated from Yale University in 1986, where she studied architecture while on a pre-medicine track, working in the freshman dining hall. She went on to medical school at Johns Hopkins University at the height of the HIV epidemic. After graduation, she spent 17 years on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, studying cancer risk and prevention in Black and Hispanic patients, among other topics. She then joined Harvard University as the physician-in-chief at Massachusetts General Hospital — where her first day was the Boston Marathon attacks.
At Columbia, she’s served on the university leadership team, a group of senior administrators who advise on operations. Armstrong is currently co-chairing a university-wide mental health initiative with the dean of the social work school.
“We believe that Katrina is the right leader for this moment,” Board of Trustees co-chairs David Greenwald and Claire Shipman said in an email. “We are grateful to her for stepping in, and we call on our community to support her.”
Less than a few weeks before the first day of classes, Armstrong will need to act quickly to prepare for the start of the fall semester. The interim president will be tasked with repairing trust between the administration, alumni, donors and students — who criticized Shafik for putting them in harm’s way when she summoned the police, or for not acting swiftly enough to end the demonstrations.
With faculty and staff, Armstrong will be forced to contend with the fallout of a no-confidence vote in Shafik’s administration last spring.
“When you look at failed presidencies — and (Shafik’s) certainly is one — often the issue is with faculty,” said Ann Marcus, a professor of college leadership and administration at New York University. “It sounds to me like Armstrong’s a calm person, who’s been battle-tested a little bit here and there, and she would be well-served to have a couple of faculty that she talks to, who can help her get grounded.”
