She lasted just seven months. Katrina Armstrong, who had been serving as Columbia University’s interim president since last August, is leaving the job.

Armstrong isn’t leaving Columbia, where she still serves as the CEO of the university’s Irving Medical Center. She’s just giving up the very thankless interim president’s job – a job which she made much harder on herself over the last week. She is being succeeded by yet another interim president: Claire Shipman, according to the official statement.

Columbia’s Board of Trustees announced today that Interim President Katrina A. Armstrong is returning to lead the University’s Irving Medical Center. Board of Trustees Co-Chair Claire Shipman has been appointed Acting President, effective immediately, and will serve until the Board completes its presidential search.

“Dr. Armstrong accepted the role of interim president at a time of great uncertainty for the University and worked tirelessly to promote the interests of our community,” said David J. Greenwald, Chair of the Board of Trustees. “Katrina has always given her heart and soul to Columbia. We appreciate her service and look forward to her continued contributions to the University,” he added.

Shipman, who has been co-chair of the Board of Trustees since 2023, has to know that she is walking into a hornet’s nest.

Acting President Claire Shipman said, “I assume this role with a clear understanding of the serious challenges before us and a steadfast commitment to act with urgency, integrity, and work with our faculty to advance our mission, implement needed reforms, protect our students, and uphold academic freedom and open inquiry. Columbia’s new permanent president, when that individual is selected, will conduct an appropriate review of the University’s leadership team and structure to ensure we are best positioned for the future.”

Translation: “Look everyone, I’m just trying to keep this place from burning down until we find someone who WANTS this job, so please don’t make things harder.” Oh yeah, and Claire Shipman also happens to be well connected politically – she is married to Jay Carney, former “pants on fire” Obama press secretary. She’s a Columbia graduate, and has been on the Board of Trustees since 2013.

The real question is, did Katrina Armstrong quit of her own accord, or did the Board of Trustees tell her she was leaving the job? Remember, Armstrong had just come to an agreement with the Trump administration’s Department of Education to implement several reforms to Columbia in order to regain the federal funding that had been stripped away – and then got caught telling the faculty that she totally didn’t mean any of it, wink wink nudge nudge say no more.

Throughout the conversation, which lasted approximately 75 minutes and included Columbia provost Angela Olinto and general counsel Felice Rosan, Armstrong and Olinto downplayed or denied that change was underway, particularly when it came to meeting the Trump administration’s demand to put the school’s Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department under academic receivership.

“This is not a receivership,” Olinto told the group. “The provost will not be writing or controlling anything. It’s the faculty,” she continued, adding, “Your department is totally independent.”

Armstrong went on to say the school had made “no changes” to rules surrounding the sorts of masked protests that plagued the university last year, though Friday’s letter announced that masks are no longer allowed “for the purpose of concealing one’s identity in the commission of violations of University policies or state, municipal, or federal laws.”

The Washington Free Beacon obtained a transcript of the meeting, which seems to have been created because Columbia administrators were unable to disable the Zoom function that generates an audio transcript. The transcript itself captures administrators struggling to prevent the software from creating a transcript and then moving forward without success.

Armstrong described the current situation—in which the administration has cut off approximately $430 million in grant money to the school and is demanding a series of reforms as a precondition to discuss the recovery of those funds—as “unbearable,” and “unwinnable,” and said it was “heartbreaking” that Columbia had to respond to the federal government.

“We have an unbearable situation, just truly unbearable and unwinnable situation where the work that we are moving forward and that we are doing is now seen as in response to an authoritarian regime,” she said. “Because the lawyers must write a letter in response to an investigation, I just want you all to know that that is obviously heartbreaking and I understand that deeply.”

Once the transcript of this meeting got out via the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Free Beacon, Armstrong had to do some damage control, because she came off as absolutely two-faced. She put out an official statement regretting “any confusion and inconsistent statements” and promised that she was going to implement the required and agreed upon changes at Columbia University.

After all of that, how could anyone, least of all the Board of Trustees or the Department of Education, trust anything that Katrina Armstrong said? The Board of Trustees may have given her the choice to resign the interim presidency and go back to just being the CEO of Irving Medical Center, or be fired and possibly risk her CEO position. It certainly sounds like she was given that ultimatum.

Columbia University’s interim president resigned from her position at the embattled Ivy League Friday night, just days after she told the Trump administration she would implement a mask ban — while privately promising faculty she would not.

Katrina Armstrong was booted from her position after the prestige school’s board of trustees doubted her ability to lead negotiations with the Trump administration over the university’s $400 million in federal funding, sources told The Post.

Armstrong’s resignation comes after the Trump White House called for a total ban on masks at campus protests as part of a sweeping list of reforms aimed at cracking down on rampant antisemitism.

The school, which was given a month to comply or risk losing its federal funding, caved and agreed to enforce the changes last Friday — despite Armstrong privately downplaying the anti-Israel policy to faculty.

In an attempt to save face, Armstrong released a statement earlier this week calling claims she defied Trump’s order “unequivocally false” while assuring the mask ban would be implemented with the full support of Columbia’s senior leadership team and the Board of Trustees.

But it was too late, as transcripts from comments she made to faculty revealed she renounced those very actions she vowed to take — which was the final straw for school officials, according to sources.

Armstrong told students and faculty in a letter Friday that she will return to her role as chief executive officer of the university’s Irving Medical Center.

The Department of Education issued a statement after the announcement from Columbia. It was pretty simple.

“The action taken by Columbia’s trustees today, especially in light of this week’s concerning revelation, is an important step toward advancing negotiations as set forth in the pre-conditional understanding reached last Friday between the University and the Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism.”

It seems that Katrina Armstrong had lost credibility across the board, and the only way for Columbia to go forward was to move her out of the interim president’s office. Will Claire Shipman be willing to press forward with the unpleasant task of reining in the leftist faculty, as well as the Hamas support clubs and terrorist cheerleaders on campus? Or will she, and the Board of Trustees, simply tread water and hope that the Trump administration pays attention to someone else for a minute while they try to find someone willing to take on reforming Columbia? Best of luck with THAT.

Featured image: former Columbia University interim president Katrina Armstrong, created by Grok 3 AI