Harvard President Gay resigns after antisemitism, plagiarism scandals

Harvard President Claudine Gay said she would resign from her position on Tuesday, after her first months in the role were rocked by her congressional testimony about antisemitism on campus and allegations of plagiarism.

Gay's tenure was the shortest in Harvard's history, the newspaper said, and followed increasing pressure for her resignation last month, after University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill stepped down.

Gay had faced pressure to resign from Harvard's Jewish community and some members of Congress over her comments at the Dec. 5 congressional hearing, and she has also faced several allegations of plagiarism for her academic work in recent months.

In a letter to the Harvard community, Gay said her decision to step down had been "difficult beyond words."

"After consultation with members of the Corporation, it has become clear that it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual."

The trio declined to give a definitive "yes" or "no" answer to Republican Representative Elise Stefanik's question as to whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools' codes of conduct regarding bullying and harassment, saying they had to balance it against free speech protections.

More than 70 US lawmakers signed a letter demanding that the governing boards of the three universities remove the presidents, citing dissatisfaction with their testimony.

"This is the first good decision Mrs. Gay and the Harvard Corporation have made in connection with the unprecedented outbreak of on-campus antisemitism. Now is the time for Harvard to apply its own code of conduct to protect its Jewish and pro-Israel students, faculty, employees, and alumni from those who spread Jew-hatred," said Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) CEO Sacha Roytman Dratwa in a statement.

"Harvard must deal with its antisemitism problem now, not only to protect its community but also to set the tone for its next president. The university should officially adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's Working Definition of Antisemitism, use it as a guidepost for assessing antisemitic incidents, and hire a president who will embrace this approach. Staffing changes will accomplish nothing if the administration does not demonstrate that it takes antisemitism seriously," the CAM statement read.

However, Gay received support from some of her colleagues at Harvard. Several hundred faculty members last month signed a petition asking school administrators to not bend to political pressure to fire the school's president over her testimony.

Despite the controversy ensnaring Gay, the Harvard Corporation last month reaffirmed its confidence that she could lead the school through a period of high tension over the war in the Middle East. It also said an independent review of Gay's academic work found she had not committed research misconduct. She has submitted several corrections for citation errors in recent weeks.

Gay, who became the university's first Black president six months ago, and the members of the Harvard Corporation said in their letters to the community on Tuesday that she had been subject to racist attacks.

Some of Gay's critics, including billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, have argued that she was chosen for the role as part of the school's effort to promote diversity rather than for her qualifications.

Ackman could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday. He reposted the Harvard Crimson's story about Gay's resignation on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

"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," Gay said in her statement.

The Harvard Corporation wrote that she had been subjected to "deeply personal and sustained attacks" that included "racist vitriol directed at her through disgraceful emails and phone calls."

Other controversies surrounding Gay

Gay has also been hit with accusations of plagiarism. She planned to submit three corrections to her 1997 dissertation after a committee investigating plagiarism allegations against her found that she had made citation errors, a university spokesperson said.

The New York Times said only days ago that evidence was mounting which suggested Gay may have plagiarized in half her academic works.

In a December 11 article entitled "Is Claudine Gay a Plagiarist?," independent journalists Christopher F. Rufo and Christopher Brunet charged that parts of Gay’s Ph.D. dissertation “would violate Harvard’s own stated policies on academic integrity.”

In some of the examples provided in the article, Gay cited the authors’ research but appears to have used lengthy sections of their writing almost verbatim without using quotation marks as Harvard demands. The official university policy, cited in the article, states that “you must completely restate the ideas in the passage in your own words. If your own language is too close to the original, then you are plagiarizing, even if you do provide a citation.”

Another example is Gay’s apparent use of work by Carol Swain, a black academic who studies issues of race in America, without any citation at all. Swain commented on these allegations in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, writing that Gay “failed to credit” Swain for her scholarship, “build[ing] on terrain where I plowed the ground.”  

Harvard’s internal review of Gay’s work concluded that her articles had “instances of inadequate citation,” but not violations of Harvard’s research standards. The Boston Globe criticized the statement as “seem[ingly] contradictory.” 

Other academics, the Globe wrote, “have raised concern that… the university is muddying what should be a clear-cut line,” adding that “for the professors who have to enforce plagiarism in the trenches, it matters what message Harvard sends about its guidelines.” 

In her opinion piece, Swain wrote that Harvard’s lenience was a function of Gay’s identity: “Harvard can’t condemn Ms. Gay,” Swain wrote, “because she is the product of an elite system that holds minorities of high pedigree to a lower standard. This harms academia as a whole, and it demeans Americans, of all races, who had to work for everything they earned.”

How has the news been received?

While many have called for Gay's resignation, many are saying this is just the first step of many needed to repair Harvard's prestige and relationship with the Jewish community. 

The Simon Wiesenthal Center posted on X that "@Harvard university has a long way to go to make Jewish students feel safe. President #ClaudineGay's failures are symptomatic of deeper problems including #Antisemitism in many of America’s elite universities. Let’s hope they all open a new chapter based on justice and equality for all."

.@Harvard university has a long way to go to make Jewish students feel safe. President #ClaudineGay's failures are symptomatic of deeper problems including #Antisemitism in many of America’s elite universities. Let’s hope they all open a new chapter based on justice and…

— Simon Wiesenthal Center (@simonwiesenthal) January 2, 2024

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz wrote, "A bit of context: leadership failure and denial of antisemitism have a price. Hope the glorious institution Harvard University learns from this dismal conduct."

קצת קונטקסט: כישלון מנהיגותי והתכחשות לאנטישמיות יש להם מחיר. מקווה שהמוסד המפואר אוניברסיטת הרווארד יפיק את הלקחים מההתנהלות העגומה הזו.@Harvard

— ישראל כ”ץ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) January 2, 2024

The Anti-Defamation League shared the above sentiments, writing that "Today's resignation of @Harvard's President reminds us that leaders at the highest level are accountable to the highest standards. Whoever emerges to lead the university must embody the highest ideals of integrity and demonstrate moral clarity and total commitment to fight antisemitism with #ZeroTolerance in a way we have not fully seen at Harvard. ADL is prepared to work with new leadership to help foster a truly safe and inclusive campus."

Today's resignation of @Harvard's President reminds us that leaders at the highest level are accountable to the highest standards. Whoever emerges to lead the university must embody the highest ideals of integrity and demonstrate moral clarity and total commitment to fight…

— ADL (@ADL) January 2, 2024