Columbia names board co-chair as new acting president

• Columbia reached an agreement last month to assuage some of the White House's demands in negotiations over federal funding.
• It expelled some students involved in a building takeover, and in other cases issued multi-year suspensions or temporarily revoked degrees.

Driving the news: Shipman, an award-winning journalist and longtime White House correspondent, will continue as acting president of the university "until the Board completes its presidential search," the university said in a statement Friday. Her appointment was effective immediately.

• Katrina Armstrong, who was serving as interim president, is returning to lead the university's Irving Medical Center.

Catch up quick: Columbia president Minouche Shafik, Harvard president Claudine Gay and Penn State president Liz Magill earlier resigned after facing criticism for their responses during congressional hearings on campus antisemitism.

• Their testimony, amid rising reports of antisemitism and Islamophobia linked to the Israel-Hamas war, drew backlash for failing to condemn calls for violence against Jews.

• "We have a moral crisis on our campus," Shipman said in testimony last April, in her role as board co-chair.

What she's saying: "Columbia changed my life," Shipman also said.

• "That is what universities are meant to do — to teach students how to think, not what to think; to challenge and broaden and definitely not to intimidate and terrorize."

More from Axios:

• Exclusive: Trump's "pro-Hamas" purge could block foreign students from colleges
• Columbia expels some students involved in building takeover in 2024 protests