Ousted Harvard president Claudine Gay has spoken out since resigning in a New York Times essay in which she downplays plagiarism allegations and reveals that she has been bombarded with threats.
Gay, 53, resigned Tuesday in a bitter letter to colleagues and students that neither apologized nor acknowledged the disasters that led to her departure.
Now the former university president reveals that she was threatened with hate speech and attacked.
Gay wrote: “On Tuesday, I made the painful but necessary decision to resign as president of Harvard. “For weeks, both I and the institution to which I have dedicated my professional life have been under attack.”
“My character and intelligence were questioned.” My commitment to fighting anti-Semitism was questioned. My inbox was flooded with abuse, including death threats. I've been called the N-word more times than I care to count.'
She added: “My hope is that by resigning I will deny demagogues the opportunity to further exploit my presidency in their campaign to undermine the ideals that have inspired Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness, independence, truth.”
“The campaign against me was about more than a university and a leader. This was just a single skirmish in a broader war aimed at destroying public trust in pillars of American society.”