Harvard University President Claudine Gay has resigned after accusations of plagiarism accusations and criticism over her testimony to politicians about hate speech on campus.Gay's departure, announced in a letter on Tuesday, comes just months into her tenure.
She said it was in the "best interests" of the university to step down.
"It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigour," she said.
She was heavily criticised, along with the presidents of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, last month after she gave evidence at a hearing in Congress.
All three had been called before the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce to answer accusations universities were failing to protect Jewish students amid rising fears of antisemitism worldwide and fallout from Israel's intensifying war in Gaza.
Asked if calling for the genocide of Jews would violate Harvard's code of conduct, Gay said it depended on the context, adding when "speech crosses into conduct, that violates our policies." Gay later apologized, telling the The Crimson student newspaper she got caught up in a heated exchange at the House committee hearing and failed to properly denounce threats of violence against Jewish students."What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was 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," Gay said.The episode marred Gay's early tenure at Harvard — she became president in July — and sowed discord at the Ivy League campus.
The Harvard Corporation said the resignation came "with great sadness" and thanked Gay for her "deep and unwavering commitment to Harvard and to the pursuit of academic excellence."Alan M. Garber, provost and chief academic officer, will serve as interim president until Harvard finds a replacement, the board said in a statement. Garber, an economist and physician, has served as provost for 12 years.
On Thursday, Rabbi David Wolpe resigned from a new committee on antisemitism created by Gay, saying in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that "events on campus and the painfully inadequate testimony reinforced the idea that I cannot make the sort of difference I had hoped."The House committee announced Thursday it will investigate the policies and disciplinary procedures at Harvard, MIT and Penn.
Gay was also hit with claims of plagiarism over her academic career in the wake of the hearing.
