Harvard is charging a staggering $9,900 for a six-day course on how to be a “university president” – after Claudine Gay narrowly escaped being fired amid recent scandals.
The Harvard Seminar for New Presidents course will be offered in July 2024 for first-time presidents and chancellors of colleges and universities and for presidents and chancellors from all areas of higher education.
The course costs $1,650 per day and is one of the most expensive and shortest programs the university has to offer.
College and university presidents and chancellors are expected to be “productive, articulate, and responsive leaders from the moment they take office,” the course description says.
“With a range of external and institutional challenges to overcome, new presidents do not have the luxury of learning on the job.”
Harvard is charging a staggering $9,900 for a six-day course on how to be a “university president” – after Claudine Gay narrowly escaped being fired amid recent scandals
The course costs $1,650 per day and is one of the most expensive and shortest programs the university has to offer.
Harvard University President Claudine Gay drew widespread criticism after her controversial comments about anti-Semitism at a congressional hearing last week
The course is intended to provide a “practical orientation for the presidency” by familiarizing new presidents with the upcoming tasks they may face – and preparing them for how to respond to possible challenges that await them.
The program also offers courses on understanding the relationship between the President and Board of Trustees and their power to improve institutional governance.
Students will examine the components of the fundraising process and the president's role in ensuring success, “explore the importance of an institution's culture and traditions,” and consider the “opportunities and challenges of social media in presidential communications.”
Participants will also examine the president's role in strategic planning and learn how to develop institutional performance indicators and sustain progress
It's unclear who exactly will be leading the course this year, but Professor Judith McLaughlin has led sessions during Harvard's Seminar for New Presidents in past years.
As founding chair of the course, she has “assisted” more than 1,300 college and university presidents since the program began in 1990.
Despite calls for Gay's resignation, Harvard has supported the 30th president (pictured at the inauguration in July) and announced that she will remain in her post with the full support of the Ivy League college's governing body, the university's board of directors announced Tuesday
Harvard University President Claudine Gay sparked outrage at a congressional hearing last week when she said it depended on the context whether calls for genocide against Harvard's Jews constituted harassment and violated the rules.
She was then forced to apologize after the hearing, which cost the University of Pennsylvania's Liz Magill her job for a similar reaction.
In July, she made history when she became the first person of color and only the second woman to lead America's oldest institution of higher education.
Despite calls for Gay's resignation, Harvard has endorsed the 30th president and said she will remain in her post with the full support of the Ivy League college's governing body, the university's board of directors announced Tuesday.
The Harvard Corporation – the school's governing body – said in its statement: “Our extensive deliberations confirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and address the very serious societal issues we face.” are.”
The board acknowledged Gay's failures in dealing with anti-Semitism on campus, adding, “So many people have suffered tremendous harm and pain from Hamas' brutal terrorist attack, and the university's initial statement should have been an immediate, direct and unambiguous condemnation.” .”
“Calls for genocide are despicable and contradict basic human values.” President Gay has apologized for the way she handled her testimony before Congress and has committed to strengthening the University’s fight against anti-Semitism.”
The Harvard Crimson was the first to report that Gay would keep her job, despite widespread calls for her to step down from politics and the business world following her disastrous performance on Capitol Hill last week, where she refused to say Calling for genocide against Jews constitutes harassment.
Claudine Gay, pictured during her disastrous appearance before Congress on Dec. 5, will remain Harvard president, it was reported early Tuesday
Billionaire hedge fund alum Bill Ackman — who has led a campaign to oust Gay that has included plagiarism allegations against the scholar — claimed Harvard's board didn't want to be seen kowtowing to him.
In its statement Tuesday, Harvard University's board addressed allegations that Gay plagiarized part of her dissertation and said they had launched an investigation at Gay's own request.
“The university became aware of allegations about three articles at the end of October. “At President Gay’s request, the Fellows promptly initiated independent peer review by eminent political scientists and conducted a review of their published work,” the board said.
“On December 9, the Fellows reviewed the results and noted several instances of under-citation. While the analysis found no violation of Harvard's standards for academic misconduct, President Gay is proactively requesting four corrections in two articles to include citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications.”
The board continued, “In this turbulent and difficult time, we unanimously support President Gay.” At Harvard, we are committed to open discourse and academic freedom and are united in our strong belief that calls for violence against our students and disruption of the teaching experience cannot be tolerated.
“Harvard’s mission is to advance knowledge, research and discovery that helps address deep societal problems and promote constructive discourse, and we are confident that President Gay will lead Harvard in accomplishing this important work.”
The Harvard Corporation, formally President and Fellows of Harvard College, has 12 members, including Gay, former Amherst College President Biddy Martin and former American Express CEO Kenneth I. Chenault.
Gay, who on Monday dismissed reports that she was a plagiarist, initially sparked outrage with a muted condemnation of the crime after the Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel.
Billionaire hedge fund alum Bill Ackman, who has led a campaign to oust Gay, claimed Harvard's board didn't want to be seen doing koto to him
A billboard at Harvard University called for the removal of President Claudine Gay on Sunday
She was subsequently forced to issue two apologies, in which she made even clearer condemnations of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group behind the atrocities.
Gay has been criticized for taking a free-speech stance on hatred of Jews on a campus recently considered the most censored in the United States.
New students are warned that not using a person's required pronoun or being “fatphobic” may result in violence.
Gay was also instrumental in prosecuting a black Harvard Law School professor who was fired from his post after defending Harvey Weinstein.
Ronald Sullivan says he was fired from his job in 2019 after agreeing to represent the perverted movie mogul. He accused Gay and others of fabricating a false story about him as a bully to get rid of him.
Sullivan said, “The actions were cowardly and cowardly and Dean Gay and Dean Khurana have simply consistently and repeatedly lied to the student body and they know better.”