Columbia’s President Goes to Britain

So where does the president of Columbia, after her half-hearted effort to purge the university of antisemitism, go for her next gig? It turns out that Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, a member of the House of Lords since 2021, is returning to Britain to work for Foreign Secretary Lammy, who in his short time in office has emerged as one of the most hostile foreign ministers toward Israel that Britain has ever handed up. Which, let us just say, is saying something.There’s a terrific account of this by Michael Mosbacher, foreign leg of Ira Stoll’s Substack “The Editors.” He begins by quoting Baroness Shafik as claiming when she joined the Lords that she has had “jobs that are primarily about making good things happen.” She failed at that at Columbia, which has yet to take serious steps to expel antisemitism from Morningside Heights. Those wondering which side she is on can now start drawing conclusions. One problem she faced was the difficulty in determining on which side she stood in the war against the Jewish state. Now we know. She’s going to work for, in Foreign Secretary Lammy, a minister who has failed to make clear his sympathies in the war between Hamas and Israel. And who has lost no opportunity in denigrating the Jewish state. He would be right at home among the tents on campuses across America. And maybe Baroness Shafik, too.At one point, Mr. Mosbacher reports, Baroness Shafik “asked for there to be greater exemptions to a proposed obligation on universities reporting donations from foreign governments.” He marks that in the early 2000s, before Baroness Shafik’s tenure at the London School of Economics, the LSE had accepted donations “running into the millions” from Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. At Columbia, Baroness Shafik’s handling of the anti-Israel protests managed, in Mr. Mosbacher’s telling, “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.’”Mr. Mosbacher also marks that Martin Kramer — who, Mr. Mosbacher adds, credits Baroness Shafik for twice calling in the NYPD to Columbia — notes that Congresswoman Stefanik and Columbia’s Students for Justice in Palestine “both cheered and took credit for Shafik’s departure.” Mr. Mosbacher reckons that the British Labour Party has “faced some challenges similar to Columbia.”So the Baroness spells trouble for the new Labour government and Prime Minister Starmer. We confess that we have a certain admiration for Sir Keir, for his gumption in confronting his predecessor in Labour, Jeremy Corbyn, for fostering antisemitism in the party. Sir Keir’s first major speech on becoming Mr. Corbyn’s successor was his vow to purge the party of the ancient hatred. He, soon enough, expelled Mr. Corbyn from the party.“The party,” Mr. Mosbacher reports, “is certainly in a better place than it was then — but it could hardly have been in a worse one.” He reckons that Mr. Lammy’s tenure “has not started well.” He lifted Britain’s objection to the International Criminal Court’s request for an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Netanyahu. Mr. Lammy then moved to reinstate British funding for Unrwa, despite its harboring of terrorists. Next, a possible arms embargo on Israel.Is this what Prime Minister Starmer wants? We have plenty of quarrels with Labour, but we’ve never hesitated to support Sir Keir’s efforts to confront antisemitism in the party and in Britain at large. Does he want a trimmer, a master of ambiguity? It’s hard to see what the Baroness brings to Sir Keir’s new government. Maybe the prime minister is hoping that she will bring in the NYPD to tackle the foreign secretary.

Columbia’s President Goes to Britain

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