Columbia University President Minouche Shafik has resigned from her position amid a free speech debate over campus protests of the war in Gaza.

Ms Shafik’s resignation comes only a year after she took the position at the private Ivy League university in New York City, and just a few weeks before the autumn semester is due to begin.

In April, Ms Shafik authorised New York Police Department officers to swarm the campus, a controversial decision that led to the arrest around 100 students who were occupying a university building.

The episode marked the first time that mass arrests had been made on Columbia’s campus since Vietnam War protests more than five decades ago.

The move inflammed protests at dozens of colleges across the United States and Canada.

In an email to students on Wednesday, Ms Shafik wrote that she has overseen a “period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community”.

“This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community.”

The students’ anger over how Israel is fighting its war against Hamas has raised fraught questions for university leaders, who are already struggling with combustive campus debates around what is happening in the Middle East.

US college campuses have been a flashpoint for Gaza war protests since Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, and Israel’s subsequent incursion into the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

Last week, three Columbia University deans resigned after text messages showed the group used “antisemitic tropes” while discussing Jewish students.