Harvard president Claudine Gay announced her resignation after weeks of controversy ranging from alleged plagiarism to accusations of enabling antisemitism on campus.
Harvard president Claudine Gay resigned after weeks of controversy about alleged plagiarism and enabling antisemitism on campus.
Gay made national headlines and faced widespread condemnation for offering vague answers at a hearing where she was repeatedly asked about whether calls for genocide against Jewish people on campus qualifies as a violation of Harvard’s rules against bullying and harassment. After her congressional testimony, Gay issued an apology and the university’s board ultimately decided to stick by her despite widespread calls from donors and members of Congress for her ouster.
However, since then, she has become embroiled in an entirely different scandal where she was accused of plagiarism in scholarly works.
On Tuesday afternoon, Gay released a letter where she cited both scandals as well as « racial animus » for influencing her decision to resign, « 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. »
Several commentators welcomed the departure of Gay from Harvard’s leadership, or warned that there is much more work to be done to fix academia.
Hoover Institute senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson suggested that Harvard is at a major turning point as an institution in a lengthy post.
« If Harvard appoints as its permanent president another candidate on the basis of DEI without a record of substantial scholarship, intellectual probity, recognized teaching, and administrative excellence, then the university will only reinforce the now growing consensus that it has abandoned even the veneer of meritocracy, » he wrote in part.
