The Columbia University president’s testimony during Wednesday’s congressional hearing on antisemitism didn’t immediately elicit the intense national criticism that Ivy League presidents received after they spoke to the same U.S. House committee in December.
But the day after the hearing, one of the committee members who questioned her told Inside Higher Ed that Minouche Shafik “lied” in her testimony about a Columbia professor. Meanwhile, advocates for academic freedom accused the president of throwing “faculty and academic freedom under the bus.”
Much of the controversy stems from Shafik’s responses to questions from members of the Education and the Workforce Committee about individual faculty members who allegedly made antisemitic remarks. Asked about three professors and pressed on why they still work at Columbia, Shafik agreed with committee members that their speech crossed a line. She also said that some of them were being investigated, while another “will never teach at Columbia again.” Afterward, some Columbia faculty members said the president had failed to defend academic freedom and higher education more broadly.
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