Columbia University’s President, Nemat Shafik, to Testify in Congress

The president of Columbia said the university had suspended 15 students. She promised that one visiting professor “will never work at Columbia again.”

And when she was grilled over whether she would remove another professor from his leadership position, she appeared to make a decision right there on Capitol Hill: “I think I would, yes.”

The president, Nemat Shafik, disclosed the disciplinary details, which are usually confidential, as part of an all-out effort on Wednesday to persuade a House committee investigating Columbia that she was taking serious action to combat a wave of antisemitism following the Israel-Hamas war.

In nearly four hours of testimony before the Republican-led Committee on Education and the Workforce, Dr. Shafik conceded that Columbia had initially been overwhelmed by an outbreak of campus protests. But she said its leaders now agreed that some had used antisemitic language and that certain contested phrases — like “from the river to the sea” — might warrant discipline.

“I promise you, from the messages I’m hearing from students, they are getting the message that violations of our policies will have consequences,” Dr. Shafik said.

Testifying alongside her, Claire Shipman, the co-chair of Columbia’s board of trustees, made the point bluntly. “We have a moral crisis on our campus,” she said.

Republicans seemed skeptical. But Dr. Shafik’s conciliatory tone offered the latest measure of just how much universities have changed their approach toward campus protests over the last few months.

Many schools were initially hesitant to take strong steps limiting freedom of expression cherished on their campuses. But with many Jewish students, faculty and alumni raising alarms, and with the federal government investigating dozens of schools, some administrators have tried to take more assertive steps to control their campuses.

With 5,000 Jewish students and an active protest movement for the Palestinian cause, Columbia has been among the most scrutinized. Jewish students have described being verbally and even physically harassed, while demonstrators have clashed with administrators over limits to where and when they can assemble.

In bending toward House Republicans in Washington, Dr. Shafik may have further divided her New York City campus, where students had pitched tents and set up a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” early on Wednesday in open violation of university demonstration policies. Activists have rejected charges of antisemitism, and say they are speaking out for Palestinians, tens of thousands of whom have been killed by Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

Sheldon Pollock, a retired Columbia professor who helps lead Columbia’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said Dr. Shafik had been “bulldozed and bullied” into saying things she would regret.

“What happened to the idea of academic freedom?” Dr. Pollock asked. “I don’t think that phrase was used even once.”

Dr. Shafik, who took her post in July 2023 after a career in education and international agencies, did repeatedly defend the university’s commitment to free speech. But she said administrators “cannot and should not tolerate abuse of this privilege” when it puts others at risk.

Her comments stood in contrast to testimony last December by the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. Appearing before the same House committee, they offered terse, lawyerly answers and struggled to answer whether students should be punished if they called for the genocide of Jews. The firestorm that followed helped hasten their ousters.

Dr. Shafik missed that earlier hearing because of a preplanned international trip. She made clear on Wednesday she was not about to make similar mistakes.

Asked the same question, about whether calls for genocide violate Columbia’s code of conduct, Dr. Shafik answered in the affirmative — “Yes, it does” — along with the other Columbia leaders at the hearing.

Dr. Shafik explained that the university had suspended two student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, because they repeatedly violated its policies on demonstrations.

She also seemed more willing than the leaders of Harvard or Penn to condemn and potentially discipline students and faculty who use language like “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Some people believe the phrase calls for the elimination of the state of Israel, while its proponents say it is an aspirational call for Palestinian freedom.

“We have some disciplinary cases ongoing around that language,” she said. “We have specified that those kinds of chants should be restricted in terms of where they happen.”

Much of the hearing, though, focused on faculty members, not students.

Under persistent questioning from Republicans, Dr. Shafik went into surprising detail about disciplinary procedures against university professors. She noted that Columbia has about 4,700 faculty members and vowed that there would be “consequences” for employees who “make remarks that cross the line in terms of antisemitism.”

So far, Dr. Shafik said, five faculty members had been removed from the classroom or dismissed in recent months for comments stemming from the war. Dr. Shafik said that Mohamed Abdou, a visiting professor who drew ire for showing support for Hamas on social media, “is grading his students’ papers and will never teach at Columbia again.” Dr. Abdou did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The president also disclosed that the university was investigating Joseph Massad, a professor of Middle Eastern studies, who used the word “awesome” to describe the Oct. 7 attack led by Hamas that Israel says killed 1,200 people.

Dr. Shafik and other leaders denounced his work in striking terms. But Dr. Shafik struggled to state clearly, when questioned, whether Dr. Massad would be removed from his position leading a university panel.

“Will you make the commitment to remove him as chair?” Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, asked her during one fast-paced exchange.

Dr. Shafik replied cautiously, “I think that would be — I think, I would, yes.”

In an email on Wednesday, Dr. Massad said he had not watched the hearing but had seen some clips. He accused Republicans on the committee of distorting his writing and said it was “unfortunate” that Columbia officials had not defended him.

Dr. Massad said it was also “news to me” that he was the subject of a Columbia inquiry. He noted that he was already scheduled to cycle out of his leadership role at the end of the spring semester.

Dr. Shafik’s words deeply worried some supporters of academic freedom.

“We are witnessing a new era of McCarthyism where a House Committee is using college presidents and professors for political theater,” said Irene Mulvey, the president of the American Association of University Professors. “They are pushing an agenda that will ultimately damage higher education and the robust exchanges of ideas it is founded upon.”

Democrats on the House committee uniformly denounced antisemitism, but repeatedly accused Republicans of trying to weaponize a fraught moment for elite universities like Columbia, seeking to undermine them over longstanding political differences.

When Representative Bobby Scott of Virginia, the committee’s top ranking Democrat, tried to enlist Ms. Shipman to agree that the committee should be investigating a wide range of bias around race, sex and gender, she resisted.

“We have a specific problem on our campus, so I can speak from what I know, and that is rampant antisemitism,” she said.

Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, one of only two Muslim women in Congress, pushed back on Dr. Shafik from the left, questioning what the university was doing to help students who were doxxed over their activism for the Palestinian cause or faced anti-Arab sentiment.

Dr. Shafik said the university had assembled resources to help targeted students.

By the end of the hearing, Republicans began to fact-check her claims, drawing from thousands of pages of documents the university handed over as part of the committee’s investigation.

Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina and the committee’s chairwoman, said that several of the student suspensions Dr. Shafik described had already been lifted and argued that students were still not taking the university’s policies seriously.

In a statement after the hearing, Ms. Stefanik said she likewise found Dr. Shafik’s assurances unpersuasive.

“If it takes a member of Congress to force a university president to fire a pro-terrorist, antisemitic faculty chair,” she said, “then Columbia University leadership is failing Jewish students and its academic mission.

Anemona Hartocollis contributed reporting.