The president of Harvard throws in the towel and resigns. She denounces that in recent weeks she has suffered “personal attacks and threats fueled by racism”: after the storm over anti-Semitism on campus and the allegations of unjustified copying of other people’s publications Credit: Claudine Gay left the university today .
“It is with great emotion, but also with love for Harvard, that I write to inform you that I am resigning,” the 53-year-old, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, said in the letter announcing her resignation. But she also added that “it was frightening to be the subject of personal attacks and threats fueled by racism.” Just six months ago, Claudine took office at Harvard, the first black and second woman to lead America's most famous university. Alan Garber, a doctor and economist, will serve as interim president in his place while a successor is identified.
Gay is the second head of an Ivy League university to throw in the towel in recent weeks. In December, her University of Pennsylvania colleague Elizabeth Magill, co-protagonist along with Gay and MIT's Sally Kornbluth, reported on a disastrous congressional hearing in which the three deans reported episodes of anti-Semitism and threats against Jewish students in the wake of Hamas attack on October 7 seemed to condone an attack on Israel. Kornbluth is still in the saddle.
Gay's resignation ends the shortest tenure in Harvard's century-old history, the student newspaper Harvard Crimson noted. Claudine, a professor of African and African American studies, took office in July, six months after her appointment. In December, with the board's blessing, she initially saved her job after controversial testimony in the House of Representatives in which, when pressed by Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, she replied that “it depends on the context” when asked whether “it should be asked whether the genocide of the …”Jews violated the Harvard rules.”
The board had rallied around the rector despite pressure from major donors and influential Jewish alumni, while controversy over the Hamas-Israel war fueled growing polarization on campus. But then, fueled by conservative media, allegations emerged that he had “stolen” other people’s material and used it in his publications without adequately citing the sources.
In mid-December, articles published in 2001 and 2017 landed in the dock, followed by the reporting of problems in his 1997 doctoral thesis, in which Harvard found some examples of “double language” without proper attribution. Gay had corrected the articles, but the problems were not over.
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