Harvard President Claudine Gay resigns after backlash

(NewsNation) — Harvard President Claudine Gay is planning to resign Tuesday afternoon following backlash over her response to alleged antisemitism on campus and accusations of plagiarism.

Originally reported by the Harvard Crimson and the Boston Globe, Gay addressed her resignation in an open letter to the Harvard community.

In her letter, Gay wrote that she was stepping down to allow the community to deal with the current challenges as an institution rather than focusing on one individual.

“My deep sense of connection to Harvard and its people has made it all the more painful to witness the tensions and divisions that have riven our community in recent months, weakening the bonds of trust and reciprocity that should be our sources of strength and support in times of crisis,” Gay wrote.

Gay also said it had been distressing for her to experience personal attacks and threats based on “racial animus” and to have doubts cast on her commitment to academic integrity and combatting hate speech.

Gay was the first person of color and the first Black woman to serve as Harvard’s president.

In a letter, Harvard’s governing board thanked Gay for her service and condemned personal and racist attacks made against her.

The school announced Alan M. Garber would serve as interim president. Garber is currently serving as provost and chief academic officer for Harvard.

Gay’s resignation comes after public outcry over her performance in a congressional hearing on antisemitism and accusations of plagiarism.

Gay came under fire for her answers during the hearing on antisemitism on college campuses in the wake of the Hamas attack Oct. 7. Gay and other presidents from top colleges were questioned by lawmakers who suggested they were failing to take antisemitic threats seriously.

Gay and others faced intense criticism for how they responded to questions from Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who equated calls for “intifada,” the Arabic word for uprising, with calls for genocide of the Jewish people.

Gay responded, in part, that there would need to be context for her to answer how the university would respond to calls for genocide. She later issued an apology, and faculty and administrators at Harvard backed her even as there were public calls for her resignation.

Following the backlash, accusations of plagiarism surfaced. The university’s investigations into the complaints found instances of “duplicative language” and inadequate citation in some of Gay’s work but said it did not constitute academic misconduct.

The resignation makes Gay’s term as university president the shortest in the school’s history.