What Columbia University interim president Katrina Armstrong has said about antisemitism, campus protests
Armstrong was appointed when Minouche Shafik resigned
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators at a protest outside Columbia University, in Manhattan, April 18, 2024. (Luke Tress)
By Louis Keene August 14, 2024
As pro-Palestinian protests raged on the Columbia University campus last year, Katrina Armstrong didn’t need to say much about antisemitism. Since 2022, she has been the executive vice president for health and biomedical sciences, and mostly out of the spotlight that enveloped other college administrators during the 2023-2024 campus protests.
But she did make a pair of statements last year related to the war — shortly after Oct. 7 and again the next month — which now take on a new significance with the resignation of Columbia University President Minouche Shafik: The school’s board of directors tapped Armstrong to be Shafik’s interim replacement.
The statements demonstrate a phenomenon shared by many university administrators at the outset of the Israel-Hamas war: triangulating the right language to make the faculty and student body feel supported without alienating anyone.
Armstrong’s first statement, published Oct. 9 and co-signed by the deans of Columbia’s schools of nursing, public health and dentistry, called on students to “come together and to embrace each other with compassion and empathy.”
“The terrible violence and loss of life we witnessed over the weekend following deadly attacks on Israel leave every one of us shaken and deeply concerned about the days ahead,” the statement read. “The scale of the conflict engulfing Israel and Gaza and the impact on innocent civilians are horrifying.”
The statement was, perhaps, most notable for what it omitted: It did not name Hamas or characterize Oct. 7 as a terrorist attack. Pro-Israel university donors, board members, and students across the country condemned leaders who failed to do so in their initial statements.
It’s unclear whether Armstrong, who is also the chief executive of Columbia University Irving Medical Center, faced any such backlash. But in a speech welcoming colleagues to a Nov. 2 medical school summit on diversity, equity and inclusion, she clarified her stance.
In prepared remarks, she declared as “basic facts” that Hamas was a terrorist organization and had been designated as such by the U.S. in 1997.
“Equally clear, and of great importance in this discussion, is that the Palestinian people are not Hamas and are not terrorists,” Armstrong said. “We need in this difficult moment to be able to navigate this distinction.”
She added: “We must describe Hamas as it describes itself—as an entity openly committed to the destruction of Israel and to attacking the Jewish people—to provide our Jewish colleagues the comfort that comes with knowing that others understand what occurred on October 7 and the terrible psychological impact of that terrorist attack.”
Posting the speech to the medical school website, Armstrong noted that “while antisemitism is a priority topic for any DEI summit, it has now taken on a pressing sense of urgency and requires a deep commitment across the University.” She also referred to the “humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”
In April, she again co-signed a letter by the deans of Columbia’s schools of nursing, public health and dentistry, this time about the importance of freedom of speech. It also repudiated the “hateful language, calls for violence and the targeting of any individuals or groups based on their beliefs, ancestry, religion, gender identity or any other identity or affiliation.”
Armstrong’s next public statement related to the conflict on campus did not come until after Shafik’s resignation Wednesday.
In the statement, Armstrong said she was “deeply honored” and “excited” about the role, but also “acutely aware of the trials the University has faced over the past year. We should neither understate their significance, nor allow them to define who we are and what we will become.”
Armstrong’s appointment was received approvingly by Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia/Barnard Hillel.
“I think very highly of Dr. Armstrong and I know many colleagues feel the same way,” Cohen told Jewish Insider. “She is a strong leader – when there were issues that needed to be addressed at the Medical Center, Dr. Armstrong was quick to respond and to address the issues.”
A native of Connecticut, she attended Yale University for undergraduate studies and got her medical degree from Johns Hopkins University. She has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, where she worked at the school’s cancer center, and later became the physician-in-chief at Mass General, a teaching hospital at Harvard.
Her first day on that job — April 15, 2013 — coincided with the Boston Marathon, where domestic terrorists blew up two bombs near the finish line. More than one hundred of the injured arrived in her emergency room. She recalled in a 2018 podcast the “opportunity to be part of the healing that I think almost no other group got to do. And so to be able to heal both patients and a community that way, it was an incredible time to start.”
Columbia did not say how long Armstrong would serve as interim president.
Benyamin Cohen contributed to this story.
