Columbia taps University of Wisconsin chancellor to lead school after 2 years of turmoil
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NEW YORK (AP) — Columbia University has named Jennifer Mnookin, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as its next president as it tries to move forward from two years of turmoil that included campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war and President Donald Trump’s subsequent campaign to squelch student activism and force changes at the Ivy League school.
Mnookin’s appointment was announced Sunday night. She will assume her new post on July 1, becoming Columbia’s fifth leader in the past four years.
The Trump administration took aim at Columbia shortly after he took office last year, making it his first target in what became a broader campaign to influence how elite U.S. universities dealt with protests, which students they admitted and what they taught in classrooms.
Immigration enforcement agents imprisoned some Columbia students who had participated in pro-Palestinian protests in 2024. The administration canceled $400 million in research grants at the school and its affiliated hospital system in the name of combating antisemitism on campus, and threatened to withhold billions of dollars more in government support.
Ultimately, Columbia reached a deal with the administration to pay more than $220 million to restore the research funds. It also agreed to overhaul the university’s student disciplinary process and apply a contentious, federally endorsed definition of antisemitism not only to teaching but to a disciplinary committee that has been investigating students critical of Israel.
Mnookin’s predecessor, Nemat Shafik, resigned in August 2024 following scrutiny of her handling of the protests and campus divisions. The university named Katrina Armstrong, the chief executive of its medical school, but she resigned last March, days after Columba agreed to the settlement. The board of trustees then appointed their co-chair, Claire Shipman, as acting president while they searched for a permanent leader.
Mnookin, 58, previously served as the dean of the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law before being named to her current post at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in August 2022. She received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, her law degree from Yale Law School, and her doctorate in history and social study of science and technology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.