The president of Harvard University resigned Tuesday after growing calls for her to do so amid allegations of academic plagiarism and mishandling antisemitism on campus.
Claudine Gay stood at the helm of the Ivy League institution for only six months — the shortest term in the school’s history — before tendering her resignation. Gay had been heavily scrutinized for her allegedly inadequate use of citations in her 1997 dissertation and her alleged minimizing of antisemitism on campus protests emerging in the aftermath of Hamas’ attack on Israel in October.
Gay spoke last month at a House Committee hearing on the matter alongside University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill, who resigned shortly thereafter amid similar controversy, as covered in The Dallas Express.
In her resignation letter, Gay explained that her decision came after meeting with the Harvard Corporation, the institution’s governing board. It was reportedly in the school’s “best interests” for her to depart and allow the community to “navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual.”
“Amidst all of this, it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor — two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am — and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus,” her letter read.
Gay will continue to be employed at Harvard as a faculty member, where she previously served as a professor of government and of African and African-American studies.
Harvard found itself at the forefront of the national conversation more than once last summer, as previously covered in The Dallas Express. First, its leadership came under fire for insistence on continuing to consider race in the admissions process after being ruled against by the U.S. Supreme Court. Shortly thereafter, allegations surfaced that the school’s donor and legacy-related admissions policy violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The complaint filed by Boston-area civil rights groups with the Department of Education pointed out that nearly 70% of donor-related and legacy-related applicants are white, and they are six times more likely to be admitted than non-legacy applicants. The Department of Education has yet to release the findings of its investigation into this matter.