‘I Know It Wasn’t Me, But I’m Really Sorry’: New Columbia President Apologizes for Cops Clearing Encampment

Katrina Armstrong said police sweeps caused ‘harm,’ pledges to develop ‘meaningful engagement’ with protesters seeking Israel divestment

Columbia University’s new interim president, Katrina Armstrong, apologized for the “harm” caused by police sweeps used to clear unruly and illegal encampments and to remove students who had broken into and occupied a campus building in the spring. “I know it wasn’t me, but I’m really sorry,” she said.

In an interview with the Columbia Daily Spectator, the school’s student newspaper, Armstrong asked the paper to “just let everybody know who was hurt by that, that I’m just incredibly sorry.”

“I know that this is tricky for me to say, but I do understand that I sit in this job, right. And so if you could just let everybody know who was hurt by that, that I’m just incredibly sorry,” she said. “I know it wasn’t me, but I’m really sorry. … I saw it, and I’m really sorry.”

Armstrong took over as Columbia’s interim president following Minouche Shafik’s abrupt resignation in August, which came following mounting pressure from both Jewish students angered by the encampment chaos and anti-Israel activists who opposed Shafik’s decision to use police to restore order. Shafik spent days during the height of the encampment negotiating with student protest leaders, but the effort proved fruitless.

Armstrong’s interview with the student newspaper, her first since taking over for Shafik, suggests she is poised to side with the activists as Columbia encounters a fresh wave of protests during the new school year.

On the first day of classes, pro-Hamas students, using keffiyehs to cover their faces, blocked an entrance to campus, praised Hamas, vandalized a statue, and clashed with police. One day later, they gathered outside former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s “sham class” to protest her “war crimes.”

In addition to her role as interim president, Armstrong serves as CEO of Columbia’s Irving Medical Center. Asked by the Daily Spectator whether she would discuss divestment from Israel with student protesters, Armstrong pledge to develop “models for ‘meaningful engagement’ to ‘really bring us together and think about what we want to be.'”

“There’s kind of a moment that our community may need to come together and wrap our arms around our community here on Columbia, to rebuild those connections with each other, to kind of understand, ‘How do we create the community that we believe in, that also is trustworthy with our outside neighbors?'” she said.

“From my perspective,” she concluded, “I have decided that my role is to ask the best possible questions that can lead us forward.”