Backlash against Harvard President Claudine Gay reached the gates of her university today after she insisted that calling for genocide against Jews might not break its rules.
Two billboards repeating her remarks to Congress were sent to the Massachusetts campus hours after fellow college chief Elizabeth Magill was forced out as president of the University of Pennsylvania.
Harvard's billboards called for Gay's resignation, just as similar billboards recently appeared on the UPenn campus calling for Magill's ouster.
The pair faced a strong backlash for their disastrous appearance next to MIT President Sally Kornbluth on Tuesday, where they struggled to decide whether calls for the elimination of an ethnic group constituted “bullying or intimidation.”
Billionaire donors have threatened to withdraw funding for elite colleges until all three are gone and the campaigners behind yesterday's stunt were convinced their time was up.
“One done, two to go,” said a source who deployed the trucks at Penn and Harvard Fox News digital.
Harvard President Claudine Gay at Tuesday's congressional hearing, where she said calling for the genocide of Jews does not necessarily violate the school's code of conduct
Harvard's billboards called for Gay's resignation, just as similar ones (pictured) recently appeared on the UPenn campus calling for Magill's ouster.
The three leaders were summoned before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Tuesday by lawmakers concerned about reports of a rise in anti-Semitism at top universities.
They faced heated questions from committee chair Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY), but failed to argue that calls for genocide against Jews on campus would definitively constitute harassment.
“This is just the very beginning of addressing the widespread rot of anti-Semitism that has destroyed America's most 'prestigious' institutions of higher education,” Stefanik wrote Saturday evening.
Adding, “Harvard and MIT, do the right thing. The world is watching.'
Just minutes after Magill's statement announcing her departure, Upenn Board of Trustees Chairman Scott Bok also resigned.
Bok vice chairman Julie Beren Platt has been appointed interim chairman of the board of directors.
In a statement issued Saturday evening, Magill wrote: “It has been my privilege to serve as president of this remarkable institution.
“It has been an honor to work with our faculty, students, staff, alumni and community members to advance Penn's essential missions.”
In his own resignation statement, Bok defended Magill as a “good person” who is “not an iota anti-Semitic” but has made a “misstep” after “months of brutal attacks from outside.”
U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) calls for the resignation of Harvard University President Claudine Gay during a House Education and The Workforce Committee hearing
UPenn President Liz Magill (left) resigned Saturday, saying: “I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for the most terrible violence that people can commit. MIT President Sally Kornbluth – who is Jewish – was also condemned for her comments. She still has to return them
“Today, following the resignation of the President of the University of Pennsylvania and related Board of Trustees meetings, I have submitted my resignation as Chairman of the University's Board of Trustees, effective immediately,” Bok said.
Gay told the Congressional committee that calls for a “genocide of the Jews” on Harvard's campus would merely constitute intimidation “depending on the context.”
Stefanik pressed Gay about whether Harvard would punish students or applicants who advocate the murder of Jews.
Gay responded, “That kind of hateful, reckless, offensive statement is personally abhorrent to me.”
She said the university has “robust policies” that hold individuals accountable when speech turns into behavior, such as bullying, harassment or intimidation.
“We embrace a commitment to free speech and give ample space to free expression, even views that are objectionable, outrageous and offensive,” she added.
Gay apologized for her comments on Thursday as the backlash intensified. She told the university newspaper The Crimson that she became “caught up in what had become at that moment: an extended, combative exchange over policies and procedures.”
“What I should have had the presence of mind at that moment was to return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community – threats to our Jewish students – have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged. she added.
But her apparent ambiguity in the face of the wave of conflict on campus since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack prompted a furious response from Stefanik, which can now be seen on the billboard outside.
“It doesn't depend on the context,” the congresswoman told her. “The answer is yes and this is why you should resign.”
Billionaire Harvard alumni Bill Ackman – who donated $26 million to Harvard in 2014 – has called for the resignation of all three women.
Elon Musk agreed that it is time for their departure, saying the hearing makes clear their liberal bias.
Harvard Hillel, the school's leading Jewish organization, said it was “shocked by the need to state the obvious.”
“President Gay's refusal to draw a line around threatening anti-Semitic speech as a violation of Harvard policy is deeply shocking given the explicit provisions in the Code of Conduct that prohibit this type of bullying and harassment,” a spokesperson said after the hearing.
“We are shocked by the need to state the obvious: a call for genocide against Jews is always a hateful incitement to violence.
“President Gay's failure to properly condemn this speech calls into question her ability to protect Jewish students on Harvard's campus.”
The Palestinian Solidarity Committee holds banners outside the prestigious college
One of many pro-Palestinian campus protests that Republicans have called “morally reprehensible.”
At the beginning of the hearing, the committee showed a video compilation of anti-Semitic incidents on campus
Bill Ackman (left), the CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, has also spoken out and withdrawn his donations to his alma mater. Les Wexner (right) withdrew his foundation's Harvard funding in protest of the response to the issue
Ackman said he received calls from Harvard donors and alumni asking if the testimony was fake
The calls for all three women to resign are becoming louder
Magill issued a groveling video statement attempting to explain her failure to condemn calls for genocide of Jewish people on campuses.
She said she was not “focused” on the issue, and said she wanted to “be clear” that calls for genocide were “evil, plain and simple” — though she said the blame was more likely to lie with her university's policies and the constitution was then with her.
Magill said, “There was a moment during yesterday's Congressional hearing on anti-Semitism when I was asked whether calling for the genocide of Jewish people on our campus would violate our policy.
'At that moment I was focused on our university's long-standing policy – in line with the American Constitution – which states that speech alone is not punishable.
“I wasn't focused on the irrefutable fact, but I should have been, that a call for genocide against Jewish people is a call for the most terrible violence that human beings can commit. It is evil, plain and simple.”