Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned on Tuesday, following antisemitism scandals at the Ivy League university, a disastrous congressional testimony, and scores of plagiarism allegations being unearthed in recent months. Her six month tenure marks the shortest tenure in Harvard’s history.
Gay’s resignation — just six months and two days into her presidency — makes her tenure as president the shortest in Harvard’s history, according to a report by the Harvard Crimson. It remains unclear who will be appointed to serve as interim president.
Claudine Gay holding a giant book
The Harvard president’s resignation comes nearly three months after the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, to which Harvard’s leadership failed to properly respond after more than 30 of its student groups signed a pro-terror statement blaming Israel for the attack against itself.
The university initially responded by issuing a vague, generic statement, in which Harvard failed to counter or even mention its student groups in question. After nationwide backlash, Gay issued a follow-up statement trying to distance the school from the students who signed the pro-terror statement.
After that, Harvard issued a third statement lecturing the public about the importance of free speech, which many found ironic, given that Harvard was named 2023’s worst school for free speech.
To make matters worse, Gay, along with the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and MIT, delivered a disastrous December 5 testimony before congress regarding antisemitism.
During the congressional hearing, the presidents infamously declined to say whether advocating for the genocide of Jews is permissible on campus. Days later, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned.
After that, Gay’s own Ph.D. dissertation was called into question by conservative activist and CRT expert Christopher Rufo, who accused the Harvard president of plagiarism. After that, the plagiarism allegations against Gay only continued to mount.
A few weeks ago, fresh allegations were unearthed in an official academic complaint against Gay when the university’s Research Integrity Office received a complaint featuring more than 40 alleged instances of plagiarism.
Then on Monday, the Harvard president was hit with six additional charges of plagiarism in a complaint filed with the university, brining the total number of allegations against Gay to near 50.
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