But the police intervention on April 18, as well as her subsequent comments about the protests, prompted fury among those on the other side of the argument who insist that the demonstrations must be allowed in the name of free speech. 

Now she is facing the prospect of a motion of censure accusing her of violating “the fundamental requirements of academic freedom” and staging an “unprecedented assault on student rights”.

Some clues to the current mess may lie in Shafik’s professional past in Britain, where she has traded on shying away from anything too strident either in words or actions. “Problems often arise when experts try to be politicians or when politicians try to be experts,” she said in a speech at the Oxford Union in 2017. 

“If experts cross that line, they undermine the credibility of their expertise and their accountability to their professional standards. And if politicians cross that line, they risk misleading the public who elected them to look out for their interests.”

As the newly-appointed deputy governor of the Bank in 2014, she was asked if she was more hawk or dove on interest rate rises, and replied that she was an “owl”, explaining: “I asked my children and they said ‘Mummy, you should say you’re an owl’. Look at the data, try to be wise.”

Not everyone saw her as wise. Shafik was known in Bank circles for being studiedly inoffensive, according to Mark Littlewood, former head of the Institute of Economic Affairs, which, suggests Littlewood, translates to the state of perpetual moral fuzziness that her detractors now see in her leadership at Columbia. 

“Her time at the Bank was neither especially distinguished nor particularly controversial,” Littlewood tells The Telegraph.

“She appears both to be a reflection and projection of contemporary mainstream thinking in terms of both economics and culture. 

“That may have made her successful in her career, but when it clashes with reality on the ground – which it increasingly does – the consequences are predictable and awful.”