Fulfilling Our Commitments

When she became interim president in August 2024, Dr. Katrina Armstrong laid out and continuously reaffirmed for the University a clear set of priorities and commitments. These include affirming our mission, values, and principles, engaging across our community, advancing knowledge and understanding, addressing discrimination and harassment, and managing protests and demonstrations, while preserving our value of free expression. When she took over as acting president in March 2025, Claire Shipman pledged to continue this work.

We have created this website to provide an update on our progress on the priorities that we outlined at the beginning of the academic year. While this list is in no way meant to be comprehensive, we hope it provides useful information to our community. We will update it frequently as we move forward.
 

1. Advancing Our Mission and Principles

Acting President Shipman and her team have focused on grounding all decisions in our mission, principles and values. These include academic freedom and free expression, open inquiry and respect for all. 

For Columbia and great universities like it, nothing could be more sacrosanct than academic freedom and free expression. These core tenets are the necessary preconditions for the discovery and discourse that enable us to push forward the frontiers of knowledge and deepen our capacity for understanding, and they have guided and defined our university for 270 years. Through centuries of lively debate, disagreement, and productive discourse, our commitment to free inquiry remains the cornerstone of our community and an indispensable foundation for our academic mission.

The groundbreaking work being advanced at Columbia is only made possible through our abiding commitment to these values. To support our community in this effort, three major efforts are underway at the University, including: 

Establishment of a Committee on Institutional Voice

  • Columbia has been engaged in an ongoing discussion about how the University can continue to fulfill its academic mission of teaching, learning, and research while creating and sustaining an environment that enables free expression, rigorous debate, and open dialogue. Given our storied history; the extraordinary scope and depth of our scholarship, disciplines, curricula, and programs; and the unique position of our community, Columbia has a distinctive role to play in advancing this critical discussion for the sake of all universities. Determining whether and to what degree Columbia should take an institutional position on public matters is a vitally important question that is part of this discussion, and it is central to our commitment to enabling open discourse and the exchange of ideas in our community. The work of the President’s Advisory Committee on Institutional Voice has been formed to explore this key question.
     
  • Daniel Abebe, Dean of Columbia Law School and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law, and Mark Mazower, Ira D. Wallach Professor of History and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Director, Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination are serving as Co-Chairs of the President’s Advisory Committee on Institutional Voice. Under their leadership, the Advisory Committee will be tasked with providing the president with a set of recommendations on the role of institutional voice in advancing Columbia’s academic mission and its commitment to open inquiry and free expression. The additional members of the Advisory Committee can be found here.
     
  • As this committee is doing its work, Acting President Shipman and her executive committee have adopted a position of restraint, ensuring that statements and communications are focused on the mission and activities of the University, thereby enabling freedom of expression for University faculty.
     

Establishment of Provostial Advisory Committee on Academic Freedom and Freedom of Expression

  • As an institution dedicated to teaching, creating, and advancing knowledge, we cannot fulfill our shared purpose without a mutual commitment to academic freedom and freedom of expression. To that end, we have created new Provostial Advisory Committee on Academic Freedom and Freedom of Expression. This committee will be tasked with advising the Provost and university leadership on the preservation and protection of academic freedom at Columbia. The committee members will serve as trusted advisors, both to consult on university policies and procedures and to ensure that our decisions are consistent with our values.
     
  • Additional details about the committee’s charge and the rest of its membership will be shared in the coming days. We thank them in advance for their critical service to the university at a time when Columbia’s service to its community and society has never been more important.
     

Establishing a Presidential Commission for Improving University Discipline Processes

  • At the request of the Board of Trustees and the President of the University, the Commission will be tasked with preparing a comprehensive report that includes a set of recommendations on improving discipline processes to ensure all members of the Columbia community are held accountable for actions that hinder the academic pursuit of any individual within the community. The Commission will review recent enhancements made to current policies and processes and provide insights into their efficacy.
     
  • The report will offer recommendations to ensure a disciplinary process that is grounded in academic integrity. These recommendations should aim to safeguard the University’s mission, to minimize risk to individuals involved in the disciplinary process, and to ensure the protection of academic freedoms within the Columbia community.
     

2.    Engaging Our Community

Fulfilling our academic mission requires thoughtful and substantive engagement with our students, faculty, and staff, inside and outside of the classroom. Under former Interim President Armstrong, several initiatives launched with the intention of deepening a sense of community and personal accountability on our campus. Those efforts include: 

University Senate

  • Throughout the year, the administration has prioritized frequent engagement with the University Senate and Senate Executive Committee.
     
  • Key initiatives have included addressing doxing and online harassment on campus, advancing the implementation of the rules and guidelines, and supporting the improvement of Senate administrative processes. 

Morningside Faculty Leadership Council

  • Launched in the fall of 2024, comprised of faculty from the Morningside and Manhattanville campuses, and complimented by a similar body at CUIMC, the Council provides faculty guidance and perspective and acts as a sounding board and source of feedback for the University leadership on our academic strategies and operations. The committee meets monthly or convenes as needed to provide advice and insight to the provost and senior leadership. 

Student Leadership Councils

  • Columbia’s Student Leadership Engagement Initiative (SLEI) launched in the summer of 2024 with the purpose of bringing together a diverse group of student leaders to engage in meaningful and substantive dialogue around the student experience and how to nurture a campus culture where viewpoint diversity is embraced. With the support of the Board of Trustees, this initiative has welcomed more than 70 students, representing undergraduate and graduate students across all schools, to participate in learning sessions covering topics ranging from mediation and conflict resolution to leadership development. Students also participated in a January 2025 retreat that enabled substantive dialogue around the role of SLEI and how to further the initiative’s impact.
     
  • Over the last academic year, leadership from University Life and the President’s Office have also met with Student Councils and the Student Affairs Committee from the Senate to maximize communication around university activities and student ideas and concerns.
     
  • In addition, University Life has created standing advisory groups for the leadership of the Undergraduate Student Councils and the leadership of the Graduate Student Councils to inform the work of the President’s Executive Committee and ensure effective bidirectional communication. 

Addressing Student Needs and Concerns

  • Former Interim President Armstrong and leadership met regularly with students and student leaders from across schools to discuss concerns, receive feedback, and explore new ways of approaching shared challenges. Results of these meetings have included additional financial support for student groups the launch of a University International Student Hardship Fund and the securing of spaces by University Life and Facilities and Operations for students affected by local and global events to gather, meet, and grieve together. Acting President Shipman is continuing this vital work. 

Review our admissions procedures to ensure they reflect best practices

  • Our current admission processes comply with existing law. Columbia has and will continue to engage outside academic experts to review our admissions practices across all of our many schools for students from the United States and around the world and make recommendations to the President and Provost about how to improve them and ensure unbiased admission processes. As consistent with our practice when faced with concerns over discrimination against a particular group, we have established an advisory group to analyze recent trends in enrollment and report to the President. For example, we have identified a recent downturn in both Jewish and African American enrollment, and we will closely examine those issues.
     

3.    Addressing Discrimination and Harassment

Upholding our academic mission and values requires us to foster a campus environment free from discrimination and harassment and have the ability to act quickly when violations of our University rules and policies take place. Columbia has strengthened the University’s capabilities to address discrimination and harassment in the following ways: 

Creation of the Office of Institutional Equity (OIE)

  • Columbia has redesigned the University’s framework, protocols, and organization for handling antidiscrimination, and harassment issues, including alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which encompasses issues of antisemitism. The new Office of Institutional Equity serves as the central resource and department for reviewing discrimination complaints, regardless of whether the incident involves students, faculty, or staff. OIE is responsible for handling all reports in a fair, efficient, and timely manner for all parties involved.
     
  • To encourage reporting and streamline processes for complaint handling, Columbia simplified the online reporting process and created a new “one-click” method to file a complaint from all Columbia websites, including the Office of Institutional Equity’s website. The University is supporting this effort through a team of 57 full-time employees—including full-time professional investigators—more than double the previous staff dedicated to handling these issues. The significant increase in personnel has enabled the Office to enhance case resolution efficiency, expand training opportunities, and improve data-driven decision-making to inform policy.
     

  • Implementation of effective antidiscrimination policies. The new Office of Institutional Equity substantially revised the University’s antidiscrimination and discriminatory harassment policy for students and groups, including the ability to sanction groups, (i.e. defund, suspend, or derecognize). The University’s approach and relevant policies will incorporate the definition of antisemitism recommended by Columbia’s Antisemitism Taskforce in August 2024.

  • The University required its community to complete training on Columbia’s commitment to protecting fairness and equal opportunity for all on campus. 32,243 faculty/staff, contractors and other affiliates have completed the Title VI mandatory training. On February 13, 2025, all students were assigned a mandatory training module on the Discrimination and Discriminatory Harassment Policy and Procedures for Students and Student Groups. To date, 5,232 students have completed the mandatory training, which is due by March 24, 2025.
     

New Anti-doxing and Online Harassment Policy and Anti-Harassment Training

  • As our interactions are increasingly conducted online and via various platforms, it’s important that the University’s policies keep in step with those changes, to deter and make clear the unacceptable forms of online aggression that undermine our core values of open inquiry, integrity, and accountability.
     
  • On March 12, 2025, the University announced a new Anti-Doxing and Online Harassment Policy. This policy applies to all members of the Columbia University community, including students, faculty, staff, and participants in University-affiliated groups, programs or activities, regardless of location.
     

Campus Collaborative

  • The Campus Collaborative initiative has made significant strides to promote open dialogue while rejecting discrimination and harassment as antithetical to Columbia’s values and identity. Through the establishment of the Campus Collaborative Fund, we have supported innovative school and administrative unit-level programming, and efforts designed to improve the campus climate through generating connection and understanding among our community in ways that reinforce our educational mission. The CCF has funded efforts such as listening tables, open discussion, workshops, and forms of art.
     
  • Additionally, the initiative developed a network of faculty and staff colleagues that convene weekly to advise on strategies for strengthening the Columbia community through reviewing campus climate feedback, identifying opportunities for bringing groups together, and refining policies and best practices. Furthermore, the initiative has engaged with students to facilitate access to the administration to better understand their experiences and identify ways to support them, thereby reinforcing the mission and fostering a thriving campus community. Lastly, the Campus Collaborative has worked to develop a compendium of resources and trainings that address discrimination and encourage open dialogue through internal and external partners to support our community.
     

4.    Implementing Our Rules and Policies

Ensuring the equitable and even-handed application of our University Rules and Policies is critical to fostering a strong sense of community, shared responsibility and personal accountability. Columbia has worked to further clarify rules and policies, and we have invested in strengthening and expanding the capabilities of the Office of Rules Administration.

Office of Rules Administration

  • The Rules of University Conduct govern conduct related to or occurring at demonstrations and protests. The University Judicial Board is responsible for adjudications and sanctions for violations of the Rules. Each University Judicial Board matter is overseen by a panel of five members of the community. Each panel is uniquely composed for an individual matter.
     
  • The Rules Administrator has primary responsibility for investigating complaints, filing charges, and presenting evidence in support of charges to the Rules of University Conduct hearing panels. These bolstered resources enable the Rules Administrator to investigate and pursue potential Rules violations fully. The Rules process has adopted new procedures designed to ensure that documents and materials are stored on a centralized database for more efficient record-keeping and student follow-up.
     

Clarifications of Rules and Guidelines on Demonstrations

  • The Rules of University Conduct balance the exercise of rights to free expression and the rights pertaining to the achievement of Columbia's academic mission—to learn, teach, study, and engage in research.  An important role for the Office of Rules Administration and the Delegate system is to provide clear and fair time, place and manner parameters that will avoid disruption of academic activities. These parameters have been updated at the Rules Administrator Website since the beginning of the academic year.
     
  • Demonstrations and other protest activities that occur inside academic buildings and places where academic activities take place present a direct impediment to maintaining our core academic mission. Based upon the experience of peer schools, Columbia is clarifying that such protests in academic buildings, and other places necessary for the conduct of University activities, are generally not acceptable under the Rules of University Conduct because of the likelihood of disrupting academic activities. All demonstration activity is subject to the University's anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies.
     
  • During protests, the University uses trained Delegates—members of the University community who choose to be trained for such a role—to enforce the Rules. In partnership with University Life, the Rules Administrator expanded the delegate pool and enhanced Delegate training to improve on-the-ground management of protest and demonstration activities and minimize disruptions.
     
  • The Rules Administrator webpage is updated regularly with information and guidance regarding the implementation of University rules and guidelines.
     

Effective Disciplinary Processes

  • The University enhanced its administrative support for University Judicial Board (UJB) process from Provost’s office, including hiring new staff, support of data systems, and processes for escalation.
     
  • The University understands the critical importance of the effectiveness and impartiality of our disciplinary processes. To achieve that goal, the UJB will be situated within and overseen by the Office of the Provost, who reports to the President of Columbia. Given the risk faced by participants in this process, each UJB five-member panel will be restricted to faculty and officers of administration only. All panel members will undergo a rigorous vetting and conflict review process to ensure objectivity, impartiality, and commitment to following and enforcing our community's rules and policies. The Provost will have final approval of all panel members and appellate Deans. Final determination of appeals of disciplinary decisions will remain with the President.
     
  • The President’s Commission on Improving Discipline Processes will also provide additional recommendations regarding our disciplinary structures and efficacy of our discipline processes.
     

Effective Identification Processes 

  • To improve the University’s ability to ensure non-affiliates do not disrupt academic activities and implement our policies and rules, the University has undertaken a process to expand and implement techniques for new identification processes during demonstrations and protests. To implement the Rules of University Conduct, the Rules Administrator must have the ability to identify individuals alleged to have violated them. The inability to identify such individuals threatens the integrity of the Rules and the safety of the Columbia community.  We are committed to supporting the integrity of the Rules while also protecting members of our community from unwanted targeting or doxxing.
     
  • All individuals who engage in protests or demonstrations, including those who wear face masks or face coverings, must, when asked, present their University identification to the satisfaction of a University Delegate or Public Safety officer. Individuals who fail to comply with these policies will be subject to discipline, being escorted off campus, and detention for trespass where appropriate.
     
  • Given the risk of disruption from non-affiliates, public safety has determined that face masks or face coverings are not allowed on our campuses for the purpose of concealing one’s identity in the commission of violations of University policies or state, municipal or federal laws.  Face masks or face coverings are always allowed for religious or medical reasons.
     

Public Safety Plan 

  • Since the beginning of this year, Columbia has expanded the Inclusive Public Safety Advisory Committee (IPSAC) and its role to advance to discussions on how best to ensure the safety of our campus community.
     
  • The University has hired 36 special officers who will have the ability to remove individuals from campus and/or arrest them. Those individuals are near completion of their training and credentialing under New York law to work on our campus. We will continue to assess the necessary size of this force to achieve our goals. The University has a longstanding relationship with the NYPD. While we train and credential our internal security force, we will continue to rely on our relationship with the NYPD to provide additional security assistance when needed.
     
  • A Morningside Campus Access Advisory Committee (CAAC) was created in the fall of 2024 to provide University leadership with forum to discuss and take feedback from students, faculty, and staff regarding campus access. The CAAC has played an important role in suggesting solutions to address concerns in the student, faculty, staff and Morningside community, and new ideas to help move the University towards its goal of easing campus access restrictions.
     

5.    Advancing Knowledge and Understanding

For more than two and half centuries, Columbia has been a leader in advancing knowledge and understanding of the world around us. We are committed to the pursuit of knowledge that advances humanity and pushes forward new ideas and ways of thinking. Only within this lens can we be completely committed to our academic mission and our obligation to our students, faculty, and the public interest. 

Promoting a Balanced and Comprehensive Curriculum 

  • As part of our ongoing efforts, we are appointing a new Senior Vice Provost this week with a focus on promoting excellence in Regional Studies.  As part of this portfolio, the Senior Vice Provost, acting with the authority of the Provost Office, will conduct a thorough review of the portfolio of programs in regional areas across the University, starting immediately with the Middle East.  This review will include the Center for Palestine Studies; the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies (IIJS); Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies; the Middle East Institute; the Tel Aviv and Amman global hubs; the School of International and Public Affairs Middle East Policy major; and other University programs focused on the Middle East (together, the “Middle East Programs”).  In this role, the Senior Vice Provost will: (1) review the educational programs to ensure the educational offerings are comprehensive and balanced; (2) review all aspects of leadership and curriculum; (3) steward the creation of new programs to address the full range of fields; (4) create a standard review process for the hiring of non-tenured faculty across the University, partnering with the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs and the schools; (5) review the processes for approving curricular changes; (6) following academic procedures, make recommendations to the President and Provost about any necessary changes, academic restructuring, or investments that will ensure academic excellence and complementarity across all programs in the given academic areas.
     
  • Additionally, the university will appoint new faculty members with joint positions in the IIJS and departments in the Arts and Sciences or SIPA. These faculty members will contribute to a robust and intellectually diverse academic environment, reinforcing the university’s commitment to excellence and fairness in Middle East studies.
     

Creating New Coursework

  • In conjunction with University-wide surveys of areas of pedagogy, and in response to many concerns about how the history of Israel and Zionism is taught, earlier this year, Arts & Sciences deans inventoried and reviewed the courses in that area, ensuring that students had choices among high quality courses. This is the first stage in a larger mapping of our offerings in these areas and Middle East Studies more broadly. The next stages will be overseen by the Senior Vice Provost described above together with disciplinary experts in SIPA and departments in the Arts and Sciences, beginning this spring.
     
  • Proactively, to build long-term academic capacity, the University is finalizing the position criteria for new tenure-line faculty jointly appointed in the IIJS and Economics, and in the IIJS and Political Science, respectively. These new positions will be posted in April 2025. We have also invited visiting faculty and postdoctoral fellows at the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies to extend their teaching until our new tenure-line faculty are hired.
     

Expanding Support for Diverse undergraduate Majors with Diverse Points of View

  • The University has undertaken an effort to pilot a mid-academic term survey of students in our largest undergraduate courses across the divisions (Humanities, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences), with the goal of better understanding student sentiment and sense of belonging in the classroom, across all undergraduate majors. This data will serve as another input for guiding the improvements to our academic programs. 
     

6.    Our Legal Underpinnings

Columbia always will follow the law. It is our expectation that local, state, and federal authorities will do the same. Below are legal issues that recently have risen in prominence in higher education with a brief explanation of Columbia’s obligations under the law. 

Continued Compliance with Legal Obligations

  • As a global leader in research and education, Columbia is subject to a variety of legal regulations governing our activities. These range from Education Department anti-discrimination rules to student-visa and immigration laws, to HHS rules of our medical school and hospital services, and countless others. In all that we do, we are committed to full compliance with these other federal and state laws that govern Columbia, while safeguarding constitutional protections.

Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA)

  • Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (“SFFA”), each school and all admissions teams and readers were trained on how to effectively capture and evaluate application materials in compliance with the law and in accordance with the schools’ admissions priorities. As a result of SFFA, all applicant race and ethnicity information was ‘covered’ and not considered by decision-makers during the admissions selection process.
     
  • A series of trainings and meetings were conducted by the Office of the General Counsel in partnership with outside counsel to support changes in practice. The Office of General Counsel attended ongoing meetings with admissions officers to review procedures, operations, rubrics, interview processes, training materials, and update on the evolving legal landscape to ensure full compliance with SFFA. A one-hour training video with an FAQ handout is currently accessible via university credentials through Columbia’s Enterprise Learning Management System.
     

Section 117 Compliance

  • Columbia has a system for tracking and reporting the receipt of foreign funds that aligns with applicable federal, state, and local requirements, including Section 117 of the Higher Education Act.  In support of meeting our legal obligations, Columbia has established policies and procedures applicable to gifts, sponsored projects, research, and conflicts of interest, and maintains relevant financial records.
     
  • Additionally, Columbia University has committees consisting of senior administrators to review international gifts and research and ensure that appropriate offices within the University have awareness and can fulfill their compliance obligations.