Claudine Gay resigns as Harvard President amid alleged plagiarism, criticism

August 21, 2024

Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned Tuesday after weeks of criticism of her scholarship and leadership on the campus, saying it would help the university move forward “with a focus on the institution rather than any individual.”

She was the second Ivy League president to resign in the wake of a congressional hearing last month on campus antisemitism, a sign to some of the power that politicians and donors can wield. Gay was also confronted with dozens of allegations of plagiarism from her academic work. University leaders said last month she did not engage in research misconduct, and some scholars were skeptical of the claims. Some questioned whether Gay — who in July became Harvard’s first Black president — was being held to a different standard because of her race. But critics, and even some who have long supported Gay, said the mounting questions made her position increasingly untenable.

The fallout intensified national debates over freedom of speech, diversity in schools and who should shape education in this country.

In a letter to the Harvard community, Gay called it a singular honor to be a member of the university, “my home and my inspiration for most of my professional career.”

Read the full letter

“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,” Gay wrote. “Amidst all of this, it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor — two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am — and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.”

Gay’s resignation was first reported by the Harvard Crimson. She will return to Harvard’s faculty, the university said. Harvard provost and chief academic officer Alan M. Garber, an economist and physician, will serve as interim president.

In a statement Tuesday, the Harvard Corporation said it accepted Gay’s resignation “with sorrow,” and said that while she had acknowledged missteps and has taken responsibility for them, she had also “shown remarkable resilience in the face of deeply personal and sustained attacks.” Much of that has been “repugnant and in some cases racist vitriol directed at her through disgraceful emails and phone calls,” they wrote, condemning such attacks “in the strongest possible terms.”

The decision came at a tumultuous time at Harvard, as well as universities across the country, as the Israel-Gaza war intensifies divisions, protests, complaints of bigotry and concerns about safety on campus.

Gay faced complaints about how she initially handled those tensions, and her remarks during the Dec. 5 congressional hearing about antisemitism on college campuses aroused intense criticism.

At the hearing, Gay, University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill and MIT president Sally Kornbluth declined to state plainly that a call for genocide against Jews would violate their university’s code of conduct. The college presidents repeatedly defended freedom of speech and said they would punish harassment or bullying. But their responses were criticized by many as tone-deaf and overly legalistic.

The House Education and the Workforce Committee opened an investigation into the three schools soon after the hearing, later expanding its inquiry to include the plagiarism allegations against Gay. A letter signed by more than 70 members of Congress called on Harvard, Penn and MIT to remove the presidents. Magill resigned Dec. 9 after pressure from donors, the board of trustees, the Pennsylvania governor and others. Meanwhile, MIT’s governing body has expressed its “full and unreserved support” for Kornbluth.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) on Dec. 5 slammed heads of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University over answers to questions about antisemitism. (Video: The Washington Post)

The Harvard Corporation, which is one of the university’s governing boards, expressed its unanimous support for Gay on Dec. 12. “Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing,” they wrote. More than 700 faculty members had called on the corporation not to give in to external pressure. Gay has deep knowledge of the school after getting her doctorate there and leading the school’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Harvard faculty, alumni fight for president as push for free speech grows

But Gay also faced criticism on another front, as multiple allegations of plagiarism surfaced.

In October, in response to questions from the New York Post about Gay’s scholarship, university officials said Gay asked the Harvard Corporation to conduct an independent review. That inquiry, which covered all of her published work from 1993 to 2019, was not led by the research integrity units at the university or its Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

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A panel of three political scientists unaffiliated with Harvard and a subcommittee of the board considered the allegations. The board announced that Gay would request corrections to some work to include missing citations or quotations, but it said that she did not engage in research misconduct.

The review did not include Gay’s 1997 dissertation. But additional questions, including articles in the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication, and social media posts from activist Christopher Rufo and journalist Christopher Brunet, led to more scrutiny of her work.

After further review, university leaders announced Dec. 20 that Gay would submit three updates to her dissertation, adding quotations and citations. But it again said that the omissions did not constitute research misconduct.

Some scholars were skeptical of the plagiarism allegations, saying Gay had not taken credit for others’ original ideas or data, but just had minor echoes of jargon and routine language from political science. Others, though, said the growing number of allegations was troubling, and asked whether she had been held to a less-strict standard than the university’s students would be.

Gay also faced pressure from donors. Len Blavatnik, a billionaire businessman and philanthropist who has given or pledged some $270 million to Harvard in recent years, has paused his donations until he sees the university take action to prevent campus antisemitism, according to a spokeswoman. Blavatnik declined to comment Tuesday.

Concerns about campus culture and freedom of speech issues are not new at Harvard, said Sam Lessin, a 2005 graduate who is a venture capitalist. But after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, he said in a recent interview, it became very clear to him that the rules on speech were not clear nor being consistently applied at the university. He said there have been strict consequences for some types of speech, but acceptance of rampant antisemitism on campus and disruption of classes.

Lessin launched a campaign to join the university’s Board of Overseers. “Change will have to come from the inside, not the outside,” he said. On Tuesday, he said Gay’s removal is an important step, but doesn’t address the root causes of problems at the university. That includes, he wrote on social media, failures in the academic review of Gay before she was selected as president, on academic freedom and on communication.

Her resignation was welcomed by some Jewish groups such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which said Gay’s failures were symptomatic of problems including antisemitism at many elite universities.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), whose questioning of the college leaders at the Dec. 5 hearing helped elicit some of the harshest criticism, on Tuesday posted on the social platform X, formerly Twitter, that “@Harvard knows that this long overdue forced resignation of the antisemitic plagiarist president is just the beginning of what will be the greatest scandal of any college or university in history.”

Rufo wrote on X: “Rather than take responsibility for minimizing antisemitism, committing serial plagiarism, intimidating the free press, and damaging the institution, she calls her critics racist. This is the poison of DEI ideology. Glad she’s gone.” Rufo has been active in trying to remake higher education, most visibly at New College of Florida, where he is a trustee appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

Criticism of Harvard’s president is growing. Some see race as a factor.

Boaz Barak, a professor of computer science and co-director of undergraduate studies in computer science at Harvard, said that many people thought the university presidents’ comments at the congressional hearing were hypocritical. Universities, he said, “have not had a great reputation for protecting freedom of speech.”

But while Barak said he has some criticisms of the way Harvard’s administration has handled the situation on campus this fall, he thinks other universities, including those whose presidents have longer tenures, have handled it worse. “I have a lot of appreciation for her intentions, which I’m sure were good, and also for a lot of the ways that she acted, and I think it’s unfortunate that it has come to this.”

David A. Thomas, president of Morehouse College who was for many years a Harvard faculty member, said he thought Gay’s resignation likely came down to the question of whether, in this moment, she could effectively lead an institution “which in so many ways represents academia globally.

“She herself admitted that there were aspects of her work that needed to be revised. That’s reality — that’s not racist,” he said. “But it does put in relief the vulnerability of Black female leaders. When they do ascend to these positions — there will be people who come after them.”

Cornell William Brooks, a professor of the practice of public leadership and social justice at Harvard, questioned how sincere, legitimate concerns about antisemitism had led to debates about affirmative action and plagiarism. “Diversion and distraction,” said Brooks, a former president of the NAACP.

As a professor, he said the students he talked to were sincerely concerned about not only their safety and well-being, but also the well-being of speech and debate on the campus. That has been pushed aside, he said, “in favor of this ideological and cultural battle. “This is less about Harvard than it is about New Hampshire and Iowa.”

“The students deserve better than that.”

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