Who Is Katrina Armstrong?

Columbia University interim president Katrina Armstrong is no stranger to crisis.

During her time in medical school and residency in Baltimore in the early 1990s, Armstrong treated patients with AIDS as the epidemic claimed tens of thousands of lives with no cure in sight.

Then, on Armstrong’s first day as physician in chief and chair of the department of medicine at Harvard University’s Massachusetts General Hospital in 2013, terrorists set off bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring nearly 300 others. Staff at Mass General responded immediately, activating emergency protocols and mobilizing trauma teams and other resources to treat the victims.

But in recent months, Armstrong has navigated a crisis that no medical training could prepare her for, one that threatens the financial health and public standing of Columbia.

She was thrust into the spotlight eight months ago, elevated from CEO of Columbia’s Irving Medical Center to the Ivy League institution’s top job after then-president Minouche Shafik stepped down following a difficult year of protests and congressional scrutiny. Now, months after her ascent, the Trump administration has Columbia squarely in its crosshairs for, it claims, failing to address antisemitism in the wake of the pro-Palestinian protests that roiled the campus last spring and spread nationwide.

Already Trump officials have stripped Columbia of $400 million in federal grants and leveled a series of sweeping and legally dubious demands to overhaul student disciplinary policies, reform admissions and clamp down on an academic department—moves experts have cast as an autocratic attack on higher education. They come even though the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has not yet completed a Title IV investigation into reports of antisemitism on campus.

Columbia law professors and conservative legal scholars have questioned the legality of Trump’s actions. But whether they are lawful or not, Columbia is facing an unprecedented threat to its finances and autonomy with a first-time president at the helm.

Soon enough, the university will find out if she’s up to the challenge.

The Leader

Originally from Alabama, Armstrong earned a bachelor of arts in architecture from Yale University in 1986 and added a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1991. She joined the medical school faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in 1996, where she stayed until 2013, when she was hired as a professor at Harvard University and its affiliate, Massachusetts General Hospital.

Over the course of her academic career, Armstrong has churned out more than 300 publications. Her body of work includes research on “cancer risk and prevention in Black and Latino patients; racial inequities in genetic testing and neonatal care; and the impact of segregation, discrimination, and patient distrust on the health of marginalized populations,” according to Columbia Magazine. Many of those topics have drawn scrutiny from the Trump administration in recent months, raising the question of whether such projects would receive federal funding now.

(Columbia did not make Armstrong available for an interview.)

To her supporters, Armstrong is a brilliant researcher with a celebrated career in medicine and academia, someone they describe as charismatic and magnetic with a strong moral compass.

But to her detractors, Armstrong is someone who has capitulated to the Trump administration and failed to defend the institution from politically motivated and possibly unlawful broadsides.

Roy Vagelos is firmly in the supporters’ camp.

Now 95, Vagelos earned a medical degree from Columbia in 1954 and went on to a career in academia and medical science, serving as chief executive officer of the pharmaceutical giant Merck. In August, amid ongoing antiwar protests, Vagelos and his wife, Diana Vagelos (whom he met on campus in 1951), donated $400 million to Columbia’s medical school.

That gift, he told Inside Higher Ed, reflects his confidence in Armstrong, whom he praised for having a nonstop work ethic and developing a clear vision for the medical school.

“Katrina is different from other academic leaders in that she wants to impact society beyond just education,” Vagelos said. “She is a doctor, she wants to cure disease, she wants to improve lives throughout the world by improving health. I had a different kind of career, but our objectives are the same.”

Claire Shipman, vice chair of the Columbia Board of Trustees, complimented Armstrong as an authentic and “exceptional leader” who “came in to help us heal and get our campus in order.” She added that Armstrong is cool under pressure despite the enormity of the current threats.

“Columbia is the epicenter of the political struggle somehow, and she’s getting a crash course in politics,” Shipman said. “Maybe it’s because she’s a doctor, but she’s definitely used to working in crisis conditions, and she just gets into the zone and handles it.”

(Shipman declined to discuss board deliberations on the Trump administration’s demand letter ahead of today’s deadline for a response.)

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James McKiernan, who holds several roles at Columbia, including interim dean of the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, argued that Armstrong is making the most of a tough situation, balancing legal compliance with a continued commitment to student free speech.

“I think she inherited a situation where the boundaries had not been established, particularly physical boundaries on time, manner, and place for demonstrations,” McKiernan said.

While he noted Armstrong has been criticized for allowing federal agencies, including Immigration and Custom Enforcement, on campus, “she’s doing what is required by the law.”

Colleagues from other phases of Armstrong’s career also spoke effusively about her.

David Asch, a professor and senior vice president for strategic initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania who worked with Armstrong years ago, called her “completely electric in the classroom.” He added that he was unsurprised she ascended to the top job at Columbia.

“She had ‘university president’ written all over her,” Asch said.

Johns Hopkins Medicine International president Charles Wiener, who also worked with Armstrong in the 1990s, said she had a good personal touch with patients and their families and was motivated by a “relentless drive to take care of people.”

Even critics looking for her to take a stronger stand against Trump had positive things to say about Armstrong.

Michael Thaddeus, a math professor and vice president of the Columbia chapter of the American Association of University Professors, described her as the most open and accessible leader he’s seen in his 27 years at the university.

“When I was in her office, I mentioned that AAUP was having a happy hour at a nearby bar that evening,” Thaddeus said. “She and her husband showed up at the happy hour and stayed for 90 minutes. That’s just something inconceivable that any previous president wouldn’t have dreamed of doing.”

Still, he voiced concerns about her leadership, including that the campus remains closed to the public and that she has yet to clearly articulate a response to Trump. Thaddeus noted that the university has been in a “holding pattern” since the “turbulent reign” of Shafik, and that Armstrong has largely focused on calming campus tensions. But now that the federal government has brought the fight to Columbia, he wants to see her step it up.

“She’s in a very difficult position now, and what she’s done in the last seven or eight months is not going to work anymore,” Thaddeus said. “She needs to commit to some course of action.”

Others argue that Armstrong is in fact crumbling in the face of threats from the federal government.

Last week AAUP president Todd Wolfson blasted Columbia in a statement that accused campus leaders of surrendering to authoritarianism and sacrificing students to appease Trump.

“The subjugation of universities to state power is a hallmark of autocracy. Columbia University’s immediate submission and betrayal of the core mission of higher education reflects cowardice and capitulation to a government that seems intent on destroying US higher education,” Wolfson wrote.

The Response

The largest decision of Armstrong’s short tenure as president is looming.

Columbia faces a deadline today to respond to a demand letter from the Trump administration, which called on leadership to make sweeping changes, including expelling or suspending student protesters, overhauling disciplinary procedures, banning masks on campus, and reforming admissions. Arguably the most onerous demand is placing the Middle East, South Asian and African Studies Department into “academic receivership” for a minimum of five years, though Trump officials did not specify what that should entail.

A Wall Street Journal article published Wednesday indicated the university is likely to yield to Trump’s demands. Armstrong’s public statements have offered few clues as to what Columbia will do. But on March 13, Columbia punished student protesters who occupied Hamilton Hall last spring—months after Armstrong apologized for the “hurt” their arrests caused on campus. Sanctions included multiyear suspensions, expulsions and temporary degree revocations. Though the punishments were announced the same day the Trump administration sent the demand letter, Columbia officials said the decisions were the result of lengthy investigations.

In a series of public statements, Armstrong has emphasized the importance of unity and standing up for Columbia’s values, a commitment to free speech, and her guiding principles.

Experts have mixed views of Armstrong’s communiqués.

Lisa Corrigan, a communications professor at the University of Arkansas and an expert on rhetoric and political communication, believes the president is scapegoating protesters and taking a tepid stance.

After analyzing her statements, Corrigan told Inside Higher Ed by email that she thinks Armstrong is “trying to walk the line between the larger national higher ed community and the donors/Trump administration.” Her statements seem to accept “the administration’s rationale for financial sanctions,” Corrigan said, which “only paves the way for further funding and speech assaults at Columbia and elsewhere using the antisemitism canard. Given the speedy exit of her immediate predecessor, Minouche Shafik, after her catastrophic testimony in congressional hearings in April 2024 on antisemitism on Columbia’s campus, Armstrong’s remarks clearly paint her as more amenable to the administration’s increasing control over the future of the institution.”

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Larry Ladd, a subject matter specialist at AGB Consulting, emphasized that Armstrong is navigating an unprecedented moment, treading carefully as she tries simultaneously to listen to the concerns of the campus community and to respond to threats from the federal government.

He likened the situation at Columbia to the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and its neighbors.

“The president of Columbia has the same challenge the president of Mexico or the prime minister of Canada has: how to create constructive conversation with the federal government. She is doing the best she can to engage in that conversation, because the government has power to help or harm the university, and she is trying to protect the university and its values,” Ladd said. “She has to be careful to defend its values without causing harm to the university.”