In facing criticism for the university’s response to anti-Semitic sentiments on campus, Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, announced her resignation on Tuesday.
This decision came as she was embroiled in a crisis due to allegations of literary theft surrounding her presidency. Some had criticized her inadequate response to anti-Jewish sentiments on campus following attacks by Hamas in Israel on October 7.
In her announcement to step down immediately, Claudine Gay, Harvard’s first Black president and the second woman to lead the university, concluded a tumultuous tenure that began in July. Her term as president will be the shortest of any Harvard president since its founding in 1636.
Alan M. Garber, an economist and physician serving as Harvard’s provost and chief academic officer, will act as interim president. Dr. Gay will continue as a professor in government and African and African American studies.
Dr. Claudine Gay recently became the second university president to resign in the past few weeks, following resignations at the University of Pennsylvania and MIT. She faced questioning on December 5 during a congressional hearing where she seemed to evade answering whether students advocating for the genocide of Jews should be punished.
Following that hearing, Penn’s president, M. Elizabeth Magill, resigned just four days later. MIT’s president, Sallee Cornblath, is also facing demands for her resignation.
In announcing her decision through a letter, Dr. Claudine Gay stated that, after consulting with members of the university’s governing body, the Harvard Corporation, “It has become clear that resigning is in the best interest of Harvard, allowing our community to move forward. This is an extraordinary moment, where the focus has been on the institution rather than an individual.”
Meanwhile, the 53-year-old Dr. Claudine Gay defended her academic record and suggested that she had been the target of excessive personal and racist attacks.
“Among all this, grappling with hatred and maintaining scholarly rigor has been challenging – two fundamental values that are integral to my being – and being subjected to personal attacks and threats based on race and ethnicity is terrifying. Animus,” she wrote.
Last year, the appointment of Dr. Claudine Gay was widely seen as a significant moment for the university. The daughter of Haitian immigrants and an expert in minority representation and political participation in the government, she took office at a time when the Supreme Court had ruled against the use of race-conscious admissions in Harvard and other universities.
She also became a target of powerful alumni like billionaire investor William A. Ackman, who were concerned about anti-Jewish sentiments and suggested on social media last month that Harvard considered only candidates who had “DEI” credentials for the presidency, emphasizing the office’s commitment to standards of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Dr. Claudine Gay’s resignation comes after the latest allegations of literary theft against her were publicized in The Washington Free Beacon on Monday, an online conservative magazine that has led a campaign against Dr. Claudine Gay in recent weeks.
The complaint included about 40 other instances of alleged literary theft that had already been published in the magazine. The allegations raised questions about whether Harvard was holding its president to the same academic standards as its students.
Ms. Fox stated in a statement, “Secondary education has been taken over in a hostile manner by political activists, vigilant groups, and biased administrators.” She further expressed, “The issues at Harvard are much bigger than just one leader.”
Within the Harvard campus, some have voiced deep disappointment, describing it as part of a politically motivated campaign against Dr. Claudine Gay and broadly against higher education. Hundreds of members of organizations had urged the Harvard governing board to resist the pressure to remove Dr. Claudine Gay by signing public letters.
Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a professor of history, race, and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, said, “This is a terrible moment.” “Republican leaders in Congress have declared war on colleges and universities, as Governor DeSantis has done in Florida. Claudine Gay’s resignation will embolden them.”
Some members criticized how the secretive Harvard Corporation handled political attacks and allegations of literary theft.
Professor Alison Frank Johnson, a historian, said she “cannot be more disappointed.”
She said, “Rather than making decisions based on established principles of eminent scholars in the field, we indulged in public humiliation here.” “Instead of listening to voices of experts in her field who could talk about the importance and originality of her research, we heard mockery and hatred on social media. Instead of following established university processes, we had a tribunal that reached self-appointed advisers and reviewed through secretive and unknown methods.”
Concerns about Dr. Claudine Gay’s work had circulated on anonymous message boards for months. Still, the first widely publicized report came on December 10, before a board meeting at Harvard to discuss Dr. Gay’s future after her devastating testimony in Congress.
That evening, conservative activist Christopher Rufo published an essay in his Substack newsletter that described Dr. Gay’s 1997 doctoral dissertation as “compromised patterns of usage and citation.”
The Washington Free Beacon followed up with several articles detailing allegations of literary theft in her published scholarly articles and providing information on two formal complaints submitted to the Office of Research Integrity of the Arts and Sciences Research Integrity Office.
In a statement on December 12, it was stated that Dr. Gay would stay in her position; the board acknowledged the allegations and said that she had been informed of them in late October. The board stated that it had conducted an inquiry and found “some examples of inadequate citation in two articles,” which Dr. Gay said would be corrected. However, the board said the violation did not rise to the level of “research misconduct.”
Dr. Gay was already under pressure as some had said that the university’s response to the anti-Israel sentiment after the attacks on October 7 was inadequate.
After initially remaining silent, Dr. Gay and other officials released a letter to the university community, acknowledging “feelings of fear, sadness, anger, and more” after the violence in Israel. Following criticism for initially staying silent and then calling Israel “completely responsible” for the terrorist attacks, Dr. Gay issued another strong statement condemning Hamas for “terrorist atrocities,” urging people to use words that “shed light, not incite.”
During the congressional hearing, Republican representative Elise Stefanik from New York bombarded Dr. Gay and other university presidents with hypothetical questions.
“At Harvard,” Ms. Stefanik asked Dr. Gay, “does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules against threats and harassment? Yes or no?”
Dr. Gay responded, “It could be based on the context.”
This exchange, and similar conversations between Ms. Stefanik and Ms. Magill, spread on social media, leaving many individuals closely connected to universities infuriated.
Dr. Gay issued an apology in an interview a week later, gaining control of the narrative that was published in the campus newspaper, The Harvard Crimson. She stated, “When words amplify crisis and pain, I don’t know how you can feel anything other than regret besides remorse.”
A week after her testimony, the Harvard Corporation released a unanimously supportive statement – late into the night after their meeting – stating that they stand firmly behind her.
However, there were indications that the controversy might harm Harvard’s reputation. The number of applicants for the Early Action program, which allows students to apply early and receive admission decisions in December instead of March, dropped by approximately 17 percent, the university reported last month.
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