Embattled Harvard President Claudine Gay says she’s planning official trip to ASIA in March, despite mounting calls to quit over plagiarism and anti-Semitism scandals

Harvard's embattled president Claudine Gay has said she is planning an official trip to Asia despite mounting pressure on her to quit over the university's handling of anti-Semitism on campus.

Gay told it Harvard Crimson she was 'looking forward' to visiting the Far East in March, on what would be her first international tour since taking office in July.

She said she hopes the trip will connect with “different parts of our alumni community that I haven't been able to reach yet.”

While it is not clear which countries she will visit, her four predecessors made high-profile trips to East Asian countries including China, where they each met Xi Jinping in Beijing.

Harvard's penultimate president, Lawrence S. Bacow, also spent his final spring break as president this year touring Jordan, Israel and Palestine.

Gay will likely tour some of the same countries to possibly meet heads of state, raise money, meet international alumni and visit local colleges.

Harvard spokesman Jonathan L. Swain confirmed last week that Gay is “planning for her possible trip to Asia in March.”

“No locations or destinations for the potential trip have been confirmed,” he added.

Harvard relies heavily on donations as by far one of its largest sources of income, but its response to the conflict between Israel and Hamas has jeopardized these funding sources.

A laundry list of major donors have cut financial support and partnerships with the university amid the anti-Semitic firestorm sparked by the president's own actions.

Among them is powerful billionaire alumni Bill Ackman, who is leading the campaign for Gay's removal, and claims that Harvard lost as much as $1 billion in donations thanks to her 'failures'.

Gay, who took over at Harvard on July 1, has faced intense criticism since the October 7 terrorist attack in Israel after she failed to immediately condemn students who justified Hamas's actions.

She then issued two apologies in which she issued a louder condemnation of Hamas, the Palestinian terror group behind the atrocities.

Fuel was added to the fire on December 5, when she testified before Congress about anti-Semitism on campus, and questioned whether calling for the genocide of Jews was hate speech.

Many students at the top university responded to the October 7 attack by blaming Israel.

A group of 31 student groups published a letter to the public as a “Joint Statement of the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups on the Situation in Palestine,” stating that the attacks “did not occur in a vacuum.”

“We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime fully responsible for all the violence that is unfolding,” the groups wrote. They did not condemn the terrorist group's actions or express sympathy for the 1,200 victims.

In the weeks that followed, several pro-Palestinian protests broke out on campus, some of which escalated into physical confrontations.

In Palestine, more than 20,000 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes that hit the Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the bombings will continue until Hamas releases the remaining hostages.

The Harvard Corporation admitted that it should have condemned Hamas's attack in Israel sooner, but gave its full support for continuing in its role.

“Our extensive deliberations reaffirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and address the very serious societal issues we face,” the board said in a statement.

It added: “So many people have suffered enormous harm and pain as a result of Hamas' brutal terrorist attack, and the university's initial statement should have been an immediate, direct and unequivocal condemnation.

On Tuesday, a data scientist also questioned her analytical methods. It was then revealed that she had refused to share her details, raising eyebrows in academia.

Jonatan Pallesen, a Copenhagen-based data scientist who works for the Confederation of Danish Industry, tweeted that he had examined her use of data in her dissertation and in a 2001 article from the American Political Science Review (APSR).

The 2001 article – “The Effect of Black Congressional Representation on Political Participation” – was one of four peer-reviewed political science articles that secured her a tenure at Stanford in 2005.

Gay has found that her academic record has been investigated, and there are allegations of plagiarism in the works listed on her resume. The university started an investigation into this on November 2.

Gay had earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in government at Harvard before returning to Stanford to teach.

In 2006, she joined the faculty at Harvard, where she was professor of public administration and African and African American studies. In 2018, she became dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Pallesen found that the 2001 article was misleading and incomplete.

“I'm not a political scientist, but I think about the whole approach to her research,” he said.

Harvard is the most influential university in American politics, with eight former presidents and four of the nine current Supreme Court justices.