« The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader. »
Claudine Gay, who resigned as Harvard University president this week, spoke out against her critics and claimed that the events that led to her departure were “merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society.”
“The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader,” she wrote in an op-ed published in the New York Times on Wednesday, the day after she stepped down.
“Campaigns of this kind often start with attacks on education and expertise, because these are the tools that best equip communities to see through propaganda. But such campaigns don’t end there,” she added. “Trusted institutions of all types – from public health agencies to news organizations – will continue to fall victim to coordinated attempts to undermine their legitimacy and ruin their leaders’ credibility.”
Gay’s resignation, six months after she became the university’s first Black and second female president, was a result of weeks of conservative attacks, and pressure from politicians and donors. She came under pressure to resign following her remarks during a congressional hearing on antisemitism on university campuses and allegations of plagiarism in her scholarly works, even as hundreds of Harvard professors and alumni backed her and the university’s board said she did not engage in academic misconduct.
Some saw a racial element to the response to her congressional testimony, pointing to remarks from people such as hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and conservative pundits that the Stanford and Harvard-educated Gay was chosen as president due to diversity, equity and inclusion criteria.
