Columbia University President Resigns to Go Work for British Minister Tilting Against Israel

Labour’s Lammy rescues Baroness Shafik back to London

When Minouche Shafik made her maiden speech in the UK’s House of Lords in January 2021, she boldly claimed, “I have had jobs that are primarily about making good things happen.”

After becoming the third in a series of newish, female Ivy League presidents to resign under pressure after congressional hearings about campus antisemitism and amid anti-Israel protests, whatever reputation she possessed for “making good things happen” is newly diminished. 

In announcing her abrupt departure as president of Columbia University, Shafik said she was “honored to have been asked” by the foreign secretary, David Lammy, “to chair a review of the government’s approach to international development and how to improve capability.” Prime Minister Keir Starmer has aimed to improve the Labour Party position on Israel from its hostility under Jeremy Corbyn, but since he and Lammy took over July 5, Lammy hasn’t missed an opportunity to criticize Israel.

Shafik took over at Columbia in July 2023, and was formally installed at Columbia in October 2023, the latest stop in what had been an unceasing rise through the ranks of academic administration, central banking and the international financial institutions.

Starting with her accent – a strange, Mid Atlantic, not quite English, not quite American drawl – Baroness Shafik (as she now is) is hard to place. She moved with her parents to the United States as a child when the family’s property was nationalized by the Nasser regime. She then moved on to the UK to obtain higher degrees from the London School of Economics (LSE) and the University of Oxford. Since then she has bounced between the two sides of the Atlantic to take a succession of grander jobs, including various World Bank roles, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, and head of the LSE.

The rewards for this include a Damehood in 2015 – the female equivalent of a knighthood, an honor without office bestowed for public service in the name of the monarch but in practice by the serving Prime Minister and the government apparat. This particular gong allows its holder to style herself Dame Minouche Shafik, although she seems to have eschewed using it – at least when outside the UK. 

In 2020, this was upgraded by then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, of the Conservative Party, to a peerage, in other words, membership in the House of Lords. This is a lifetime appointment to Britain’s upper chamber of parliament. 

As a supposedly non-partisan figure, she was elevated as a so-called cross bencher. Some saw Shafik’s ennoblement as a consolation prize for Johnson’s failure to install her as head of the Bank of England, an appointment he is said at one point to have been extremely keen on. Baroness Shafik’s contribution to the Lords has not so far been great. During her three years of service before taking a leave of absence to take up the Columbia position, she spoke on a total of four occasions, twice on financial services regulation and twice in 2022 on free speech on university campuses. 

Both the latter contributions were not cheering to free speech advocates. The then Conservative government was trying to push through a duty on universities to promote free speech. Shafik was highly skeptical of this move – citing how difficult it would be to implement. (The bill eventually made it onto the statute books, but one of the new Labour Government’s first decisions was to stop it coming into force this month). She also asked for there to be greater exemptions to a proposed obligation on universities reporting donations from foreign governments. The LSE had in the early 2000s, before Shafik’s tenure, accepted donations running into the millions from Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. The school awarded Saif Gaddafi, the ruler’s son, a doctorate in 2008.

Of the hundreds of votes in the Lords during those three years, Shafik participated in just eight. The noble Baroness was inarguably very much a part time legislator. But nevertheless she decided that she needed to take a leave of absence from the upper House when accepting her New York role. 

Shafik’s handling of the anti-Israel protests managed to satisfy neither the Jewish community, the Congress, or the anti-Israel faculty and protesters. As she acknowledged in her resignation announcement, denouncing “the forces of polarization,” it has “been a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community.” Martin Kramer, who credits Shafik for twice calling in the New York police against anti-Israel lawbreakers, notes that pro-Israel pillar Rep. Elise Stefanik and Columbia’s Students for Justice for Palestine both cheered and took credit for Shafik’s departure.

The British Labour Party has faced some challenges similar to Columbia. Keir Starmer spent considerable efforts in opposition arguing that Labour had turned around its position on Israel from the dark days under Jeremy Corbyn. The party is certainly in a better place than it was then —  but it could hardly have been in a worse one. 

Lammy’s tenure as foreign secretary, though, has not started well. After first reversing the last government’s formal objection to the International Criminal Court’s request for an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant. Lammy decided to reinstate British funding for UNRWA, the UN agency that has employed and provided cover for Hamas terrorists. Now an arms embargo on Israel is on the cards. The foreign secretary has been relentless in publicly criticizing Israel even before all the facts are in, weighing in in recent days to “strongly” condemn an Israeli minister’s visit to Jerusalem holy sites, pronounce himself “appalled by the Israeli Military strike on al-Tabeen school” (a strike Israel says killed 31 confirmed terrorists in a “Hamas stronghold”), and be “deeply concerned by Israel’s decision to revoke the status of 8 Norwegian diplomats.” The only debate is whether this policy turn is political, motivated by Labour fearing the loss of the Muslim vote, or ideological, a product of ingrained Corbynism.

What can Britain expect from Baroness Shafik’s return? She will surely be more active in the Lords this time around. Considering her past contributions, those of her new boss, and her record at Columbia, the chances seem somewhat remote that “good things happen.”