Michael Goodwin: Katrina Armstrongs resignation as Columbias interim prez is another Trump win against lefty insanity
Maybe the third time will be the charm.Columbia University obviously subscribes to the belief that Friday night is the best time to put out bad news.How else to explain the fact that, at 8 p.m.
Friday, it announced that its interim president had quit?If members of the Board of Trustees hoped nobody would notice, they’re more delusional than advertised.The resignation of Dr.Katrina Armstrong is yet another bombshell development in the Trump administration’s crackdown on universities violating the civil rights of Jewish students, with Columbia a serial offender and top test case.The announcement gave no reason why Armstrong is returning to the medical school or why she is being replaced by Claire Shipman, co-chair of the trustees.Shipman, a former television journalist, will be Columbia’s third president in a year.
The first, Nemat Shafik, was overwhelmed by campus chaos after the Hamas terrorist invasion of Israel and the Jewish state’s response, and fled to London.Then again, no explanation for the latest change was needed.Numerous reports show Columbia mired in internal turmoil over the White House plan to strip it of at least $400 million in federal grants and contracts unless it makes changes that will subject disruptive students to arrest and provide responsible oversight to two departments that are hotbeds of antisemitism.Armstrong’s sin was that she tried to play for two teams at the same time.
She initially promised the White House that Columbia would forbid demonstrators from wearing masks, then said the opposite to faculty members.She later reassured the White House she would keep her initial promise, but her credibility was ruined.So now she’s gone, and Shipman is left to clean up the mess.If she fails to implement the reasonable demands, she will plunge Columbia into a legal war it can’t win and could cost it billions of dollars in lost federal aid over several years.That would demolish its standing for a generation and set the stage f...