Harvard President Claudine Gay announced plans to resign from her position Tuesday amid plagiarism accusations and criticism for her response last month to questions posed at a congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus.
In a letter addressed to the Harvard community, Gay said that “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.”
“It is a singular honor to be a member of this university, which has been my home and my inspiration for most of my professional career,” she said.
“My deep sense of connection to Harvard and its people has made it all the more painful to witness the tensions and divisions that have riven our community in recent months, weakening the bonds of trust and reciprocity that should be our sources of strength and support in times of crisis. 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.”
The Ivy League school’s governing body, the Harvard Corporation, confirmed that Gay had decided to resign in a statement, saying that she plans “to step down from the presidency and resume her faculty position at Harvard.” Alan M. Garber, Harvard’s provost and chief academic officer, will serve as interim president.
Gay’s resignation comes six months and two days into her presidency, making her tenure the shortest in Harvard history, according to The Harvard Crimson, the university’s student newspaper.
Gay had faced calls for her resignation since she and two other university presidents — the University of Pennsylvania’s Elizabeth Magill and MIT’s Sally Kornbluth — appeared for a hearing on antisemitism last month before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
In an exchange that later went viral, Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., pressed the presidents to equivocally say that calls for genocide of Jewish people amounted to bullying and harassment on their campuses.
“At Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no,” Stefanik asked at the Dec. 5 hearing.
“It can be, depending on the context,” Gay said. She later added, “Antisemitic rhetoric, when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct, and we do take action.”
She sought to clarify her response in a statement shared on Harvard’s social media pages after the hearing, saying, “Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.”
The incident prompted Magill and Penn board chair Scott Bok to resign from their posts.
[ Penn’s president resigns after testimony about antisemitism; trustees chair also quits ]
On Tuesday, Stefanik called Gay’s resignation “long overdue.”
“Her answers were absolutely pathetic and devoid of the moral leadership and academic integrity required of the President of Harvard,” she said in a statement.
Days after last month’s hearing, the House committee announced it would investigate the policies and disciplinary procedures at Harvard, MIT and Penn, The Associated Press reported. Separate federal civil rights investigations were earlier opened at several universities, including Harvard and Penn, after the U.S. Education Department received complaints of antisemitic or Islamophobic behavior, according to the AP.
Gay has also been accused of plagiarizing other academics in published papers and her Ph.D. dissertation, The Wall Street Journal reported. Last month, Harvard officials said they learned of allegations involving three articles in late October and launched an investigation that “revealed a few instances of inadequate citation.”
A new round of accusations circulated against Gay on Monday, published in an unsigned complaint in the conservative Washington Free Beacon, according to The New York Times.
Gay denied any wrongdoing, telling The Harvard Crimson last month, “I stand by the integrity of my scholarship.”