Harvard president Claudine Gay resigned after weeks of controversy about alleged plagiarism and enabling antisemitism on campus.
Gay made national headlines and faced widespread condemnation for offering vague answers at a hearing where she was repeatedly asked about whether calls for genocide against Jewish people on campus qualifies as a violation of Harvard’s rules against bullying and harassment. After her congressional testimony, Gay issued an apology and the university’s board ultimately decided to stick by her despite widespread calls from donors and members of Congress for her ouster.
However, since then, she has become embroiled in an entirely different scandal where she was accused of plagiarism in scholarly works.
On Tuesday afternoon, Gay released a letter where she cited both scandals as well as “racial animus” for influencing her decision to resign, “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.”
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Several commentators welcomed the departure of Gay from Harvard’s leadership, or warned that there is much more work to be done to fix academia.
Hoover Institute senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson suggested that Harvard is at a major turning point as an institution in a lengthy post.
“If Harvard appoints as its permanent president another candidate on the basis of DEI without a record of substantial scholarship, intellectual probity, recognized teaching, and administrative excellence, then the university will only reinforce the now growing consensus that it has abandoned even the veneer of meritocracy,” he wrote in part. “And the institution will thus continue on its current Target/Disney/Bud Lite trajectory.”
“Completely ridiculous that she was allowed to resign. She should’ve been fired weeks ago. But she wasn’t, because Harvard is all-in on racist DEI insanity. With her gone, they’ll pick someone with the exact same ideology and identity checkboxes, but without the plagiarism,” CEO and co-founder of The Federalist Sean Davis wrote.
“It took long enough following the[] congressional testimony, but Claudine Gay will resign as President of Harvard. Note — even with the plagiarism accusations — she will return to teaching as a member of the faculty,” FOX Business’ Kelly O’Grady wrote.
State Freedom Caucus communications director Greg Price appeared to joke that Gay would plagiarize former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to comfort her supporters.
“After resigning from Harvard, Claudine Gay retreated to her office where her friends and advisers were waiting,” he wrote. “They were all in tears over the events of the day. But Gay gave an inspirational speech, telling them ‘don’t worry, everyone. We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’”
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Other public figures lamented her resignation, arguing it was a sign of racism rather than poor performance or numerous allegations of plagiarism.
“Racist mobs won’t stop until they topple all Black people from positions of power and influence who are not reinforcing the structure of racism. What these racist mobs are doing should be obvious to any reporter who cares about truth or justice as opposed to conflicts and clicks,” Boston University professor and prominent critical race theory advocate Ibram X. Kendi wrote in an X post that was slapped with a Community Note pointing to a New York Times article on Gay’s plagiarism.
In the same thread, the head of BU’s Center for Antiracist Research went on to write, “Too often mainstream reporters join the racist mob or give it credibility—as they did in this case—just as they did a century ago.”
1619 Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones responded to the resignation by writing, “Well, they got what they wanted from their well-executed plan.”
“Let’s be real,” she wrote in a post later that day. “This is an extension of what happened to me at UNC, and it is a glimpse into the future to come. Academic freedom is under attack. Racial justice programs are under attack. Black women will be made to pay. Our so-called allies too often lack any real courage.”
NPR TV critic and media analyst Eric Deggans wrote, “The intimidation is the point. Will the next president at Harvard stand for diversity? Will that person be female? Will that person be Black? If not, they have forced several steps back. And everyone across the school gets the message.”
“Attacks against Claudine Gay have been unrelenting & the biases unmasked,” the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Janai Nelson, wrote. “Her resignation on the heels of Liz Magill’s set dangerous precedent in the academy for political witch hunts. The project isn’t to thwart hate but to foment it thru vicious takedowns. This protects no one.”
