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Columbia University President Minouche Shafik resigned unexpectedly Wednesday night, immediately transferring leadership to Yale alumna Katrina A. Armstrong ’86.

The Columbia board of trustees announced Armstrong’s appointment in a statement concurrently with Shafik’s resignation. Armstrong is the CEO of Columbia’s medical center and executive vice president of the university’s health and biomedical sciences programs. At Yale, she was a member of Saybrook College and earned her bachelor’s degree in architecture. 

After Yale, Armstrong received her medical degree from Johns Hopkins University. She then received a master’s degree in clinical epidemiology at University of Pennsylvania and immediately joined the faculty. In 2013, she became the physician-in-chief of Massachusetts General Hospital and chair of the Department of Medicine at Harvard University. Armstrong was appointed to run Columbia’s medical center in 2022.

“As I step into this role, I am acutely aware of the trials the University has faced over the past year,” Armstrong wrote in a message to the Columbia community. “The familiar excitement and promise of a new academic year are informed this year by the presence of change and continuing concerns, but also by the immense opportunity to look forward.” 

Columbia has not specified a length for Armstrong’s interim presidency.

Shafik is the latest university president to resign in the wake of pro-Palestine protests, which spread to campuses across the nation, including Yale, through the 2023-24 academic year. 

Columbia’s campus was thrown into turmoil last year after students erected pro-Palestine encampments while Shafik was in Washington, D.C., to testify before Congress about antisemitism at campus protests. 

As protests over the ongoing war in Gaza continued through the end of the spring semester and gained national attention, students broke into and occupied a Columbia building and hundreds were arrested.

Shafik’s resignation follows Liz Magill ’88 of Penn and Claudine Gay of Harvard. Both presidents stepped down soon after a disastrous December Congressional hearing that generated widespread backlash for the former presidents’ evasive answers to a question about whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their campus policies. 

Both Penn and Harvard appointed interim presidents, and Harvard later named their appointee Alan Garber as president for three years and announced plans to look for a successor starting around summer 2026.

Former Yale University President Peter Salovey was also called to testify before Congress, but the hearing did not garner the same attention as it was closed to the public. The testimony occurred before President Maurie McInnis began her term.

In her message, Armstrong emphasized the particular role of the Columbia faculty in meeting the university’s goals, calling them the “ultimate keepers of the institution’s values” and stressing the importance of critical thinking in achieving “tolerance of contrary points of view.”

Shafik explained in her announcement that she decided to step down because her tenure has been marred by “a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community.” 

“This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community. Over the summer, I have been able to reflect and have decided that my moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead,” Shafik wrote.

Shafik’s tenure as president lasted 13 months, among the shortest of any Columbia president.