Harvard president Claudine Gay resigns amid plagiarism claims, backlash from antisemitism testimony
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Harvard University President Claudine Gay resigned Tuesday amid accusations of plagiarism and criticism of testimony at a congressional hearing where she failed to say unequivocally that campus calls for genocide of Jews would violate the school's behavior policy.
Gay announced her departure, which came just months into her term, in a letter to the Harvard community.
She and the presidents of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania came under fire last month for their legal responses to a series of questions from New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, who asked whether “calling for genocide of Jews” would violate the colleges' code violate. of behavior. The three presidents were called before the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce to respond to allegations that universities were failing to protect Jewish students amid rising fears of anti-Semitism worldwide and the fallout from the increasingly intense Israel's ongoing war in Gaza, which is facing increased criticism due to the rising Palestinian death toll.
Gay said it depended on the context, adding that when “speech turns into behavior, that is against our policy.” The response was met with swift backlash from Republican and some Democratic lawmakers as well as the White House. The hearing was parodied in the opening skit of “Saturday Night Live.”
Gay later apologized and told the student newspaper The Crimson that she had become involved in a heated argument during the House committee hearing and had failed to properly denounce threats of violence against Jewish students to set.
“What I should have had the presence of mind to do 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 to stay. ,” said Homo.
The episode marred Gay's early tenure at Harvard (she became president in July) and sowed discord on the Ivy League campus. On Thursday, Rabbi David Wolpe resigned from a new commission on anti-Semitism founded by Gay, saying in a post on make what I had hoped for.”
The House committee announced Thursday that it will investigate the policies and disciplinary procedures of Harvard, MIT and Penn. Separate federal civil rights investigations were previously opened at Harvard, Penn and several other universities in response to complaints filed with the U.S. Department of Education.