For more than a year and a half, Shoshana Shendelman has been at the epicenter of one of the biggest stories in the country: the raging campus battles over Israel’s war on Gaza. Earlier in the year, Columbia University, an institution deeply entwined with Shendelman’s life, was the site of the first major university protest encampment. And the university cracked down, inviting police onto its New York campus where they made violent arrests.

Shendelman, who got two masters’ degrees and her doctorate from Columbia and whose child currently attends the school, had sat on the board of trustees of the university since March 2023. According to a recent New York Magazine story, Shendelman was one of the most active board members in the pro-Israel camp pushing for action to restore order on campus. The university meted out harsh punishments for student protesters, short circuited due process, and, critics say, stifled pro-Palestine speech.

The hard-line faction of trustees had long since gained the upper hand on the board, but the campus — and the nation — continued to be rocked by the debate over Israel’s war on Gaza, including as part of an onslaught from Donald Trump’s administration that has cost the school hundreds of millions in funding.

In November, tumult would reach Shendelman’s life — not, however, in her role on the Columbia board, but in her professional career. In the six months that followed, Shendelman would see controversy erupt over the pharmaceutical company she started and led — including allegations from the federal government of statutory and regulatory violations in clinical trials, and a shareholder lawsuit alleging fraud on her part. Shendelman has since denied doing anything wrong, but she lost her leading roles at the firm.

She maintained, however, her position on the Columbia board of trustees as the body pushed for harsh responses to pro-Palestine protests and sought to consolidate power over the school. Now, the controversies around her pharmaceutical work are raising questions about her role on the university board.

“At a moment when the board of trustees is leading with a very heavy and misguided hand, keeping Shendelman on the board is just one more indication of how deeply the board has lost its way,” said a tenured professor at Columbia’s Irving Medical Center who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the university.

Shendelman did not respond to inquiries from The Intercept. Columbia’s administration did not offer responses to questions for the board of trustees by press time.

Shendelman had been the CEO of a pharmaceutical firm called Applied Therapeutics, a company hoping to bring two drugs to market. Shendelman was a central figure in the firm. She had founded the company; fundraised for it, including taking it public; and spearheaded the development of its lead drug candidate, govorestat, as well as its clinical studies.

Then on November 27, Applied Therapeutics announced that govorestat was rejected by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. On the same day, Shendelman was issued a stern warning by the FDA. In a letter addressed to her, the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, which regulates drugs, called out Applied Therapeutics for the deletion of sensitive data ahead of an FDA inspection and failing to disclose crucial information about “errors” made during clinical trials for their lead drug candidate. The problems, the FDA said, amounted to apparent statutory and regulatory violations. (Applied Therapeutics did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.)

In a podcast interview this month, Shendelman said there were no safety or efficacy concerns about govorestat, and that it had been rejected by the FDA for bureaucratic reasons. (The FDA letter said Applied Therapeutic’s failure to disclose certain information to the agency created issues with performing “an evaluation of the safety and effectiveness of the drug.”)

Following the regulator’s letter, the company’s stock price tanked, dropping 80 percent in three days. Within weeks, shareholders filed a lawsuit against Applied Therapeutics, Shendelman, and another company officer, alleging that Shendelman in particular had known about problems with clinical trials since May 2024, and committed securities fraud by failing to disclose information about the issues to investors in a series of rosy public statements. The stock continued to rise on this incomplete information, the suit alleges, and Shendelman sold off stocks totaling more than $6.6 million at an “artificially inflated share price,” as the suit put it. The majority of the sales, more than $4.7 million worth, came in a three-day flurry in August 2024, just days after Shendelman gave a positive assessment of the company’s FDA application process to investors.

In separate responses to the lawsuit, Applied Therapeutics denied all wrongdoing, and Shendelman’s lawyers moved to dismiss the claims. They argue that none of the claims in the suit constitute fraud, that she sold only a fraction of her shares in the company, and that the allegations are based purely on “conjecture, hindsight, and allegations that Dr. Shendelman was unduly optimistic about the possibility of approval.”

On December 19, a........

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