Columbia University acting president Claire Shipman privately apologized to a small group of colleagues and donors over leaked text messages, first reported in the Washington Free Beacon, in which she argued that the school needed to get an "Arab on our board" and suggested that a Jewish trustee, Shoshana Shendelman, should be removed over her pro-Israel advocacy.

Shipman sent her apology note, which the Free Beacon obtained, to roughly a dozen people, at least four of which are Jewish, according to a source familiar. Shipman opened the message by referencing "news reports containing some of my personal messages from 2023 and 2024." Those messages "were wrong," she said.

"Let me be clear: The things I said in a moment of frustration and stress were wrong," Shipman wrote. "They do not reflect how I feel. I have apologized directly to the person named in my texts, and I am apologizing now to you.

"I have tremendous respect and appreciation for that board member, whose voice on behalf of Columbia’s Jewish community is critically important," she continued. "I should not have written those things, and I am sorry. It was a moment of immense pressure, over a year and a half ago, as we navigated some deeply turbulent times. But that doesn’t change the fact that I made a mistake.  I promise to do better."

Shipman said the "conclusions drawn in headlines" about her messages were "off base and misleading." She did not, however, argue that the messages were "published out of context," a charge Columbia leveled in a statement sent to the Free Beacon on Tuesday.

Ari Shrage, founder of the Columbia Jewish Alumni Association, said Shipman should resign.

"Interim president Shipman's statements are extremely offensive and unacceptable," he told the Free Beacon. "Her lack of empathy and disregard for a board member concerned with student safety ... makes her not fit to serve in the office of the president of Columbia University. We believe that the interim president should step down immediately."

Columbia declined to comment.

The ordeal comes as the Ivy League school enters its fourth month of negotiations with the Trump administration, which cut $400 million to the school in March over campus anti-Semitism.

The road to restoring those funds has been rocky: At a disastrous deposition in April, former Columbia president Katrina Armstrong told the government that she could not recall a single incident from the university’s own anti-Semitism report. Two months later, the Education Department notified Columbia’s accreditor that the school was out of compliance with its accreditation standards, prompting the university to issue a statement on its commitment to "combating anti-Semitism."

Shipman sent the bulk of the texts in early 2024, months after Hamas's Oct. 7 massacre, when she served as co-chair of Columbia's board of trustees. She called that time "a moment of immense pressure" and "deeply turbulent" in her apology note.

Shipman's texts were obtained by the House Committee on Education and Workforce.

"We need to get somebody from the middle east [sic] or who is Arab on our board," Shipman wrote in one message on January 17, 2024. "Quickly I think. Somehow."

A week later, Shipman told a colleague that Shendelman, one of the board’s most outspoken critics of campus anti-Semitism, had been "extraordinarily unhelpful," adding, "I just don’t think she should be on the board."

In late April, with the encampment in full swing, Shipman had harsher words for Shendelman. She told the then-vice-chair of Columbia's board, Wanda Greene, to keep Shendelman in the dark about the school’s plans to negotiate with the protesters, claiming that she was "fishing for information" that could force the school’s hand as it resisted calling the police.

"Do you believe that she is a mole?" Greene asked on April 22, 2024. "A Fox in the henhouse?"

"I do," Shipman replied. Shortly thereafter, she expressed her personal dislike of Shendelman, a biotech executive whose family fled Iran during the Iranian Revolution.

"I’m tired of her," Green texted. "So so tired," Shipman responded.

The messages were included in a letter sent to Columbia on Tuesday by committee chair Tim Walberg (R., Mich.) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., NY). Addressing Shipman by name, the committee requested "clarifications on the attached correspondence" and said the messages raised "troubling questions regarding Columbia's priorities just months after the October 7th attack, which was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust."

Jessica Schwalb contributed to this report.