Harvard President Claudine Gay has reportedly resigned, as per the Harvard Crimson student newspaper's Tuesday report amid accusations of plagiarism and scrutiny regarding her remarks on antisemitism within the campus community.
Significant criticism has been directed at Gay and other Ivy League presidents for their congressional testimony on antisemitism on college campuses. Gay's tenure has been the shortest in Harvard's history. Calls for her resignation had escalated in the previous month following the resignation of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill.
During their testimony before a U.S. House of Representatives committee on December 5, Gay, Magill, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth faced scrutiny for not providing a clear response to Representative Elise Stefanik's question about whether advocating for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools' codes of conduct on bullying and harassment. They argued the need to balance the issue against the backdrop of free speech protections.
In response to the dissatisfaction with their testimony, over 70 U.S. lawmakers signed a letter urging the governing boards of the three universities to remove the presidents. While some Harvard colleagues supported Gay, signing a petition against her removal, allegations of plagiarism have also surfaced. Gay planned to submit three corrections to her 1997 dissertation following a committee's investigation into plagiarism claims, revealing citation errors.
In her resignation letter, she expressed that stepping down was in the university's "best interests". She conveyed her distress at having doubt cast upon her dedication to addressing hate and maintaining scholarly rigour.
Source: Reuters
Image Credit: Harvard University
