Harvard University President Claudine Gay resigned on Tuesday afternoon after several allegations of plagiarism and controversy about her response to antisemitism on campus.
The Harvard Crimson reported the decision from sources familiar with the matter, and Gay confirmed the news in a personal statement “after consultation with members of the Corporation” and said she’ll return to the faculty.
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“This is not a decision I came to easily. Indeed, it has been difficult beyond words because I have looked forward to working with so many of you to advance the commitment to academic excellence that has propelled this great university across centuries,” Gay wrote.
Gay was sworn in as the university’s 30th president in July, becoming the first black person and the second woman to lead the elite institution. Her resignation marks the shortest-serving tenure as president in Harvard’s history.
“When my brief presidency is remembered, I hope it will be seen as a moment of reawakening to the importance of striving to find our common humanity — and of not allowing rancor and vituperation to undermine the vital process of education,” Gay said.
She is set to step down three weeks after the Harvard Corporation, the university’s highest governing body, issued a statement supporting Gay following a wave of backlash after Harvard and two other elite university presidents testified in a congressional hearing regarding antisemitism on campus.
Pressed by members of Congress at the start of December about their colleges’ response amid the Israel-Hamas war, all three presidents dodged questions about antisemitism and calls for genocide on their campuses. University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned on Dec. 9, and pressure mounted against the presidents of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to do the same.
On top of the fallout following Gay’s congressional testimony, she was accused of plagiarism in her doctoral dissertation and several published works. The most recent scandal emerged Monday, when Gay was slapped with six new plagiarism allegations that she copied phrases or entire sentences in a 2001 article.
The same Republican-led House committee that held the hearing is investigating plagiarism allegations against Gay, and Harvard said it found two instances of “duplicative language without appropriate attribution” in her 1997 dissertation and two more published articles that needed additional citations.
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This weekend, two students called for Gay’s resignation despite the university’s support in an editorial published in the Harvard Crimson, writing, “The Harvard Corporation must find a leader who can do better.” In a contrasting separate piece, the Harvard Crimson’s editorial board backed Gay but agreed some of the accusations against her “are indeed plagiarism.”
Dr. Alan Garber will become the interim president once Gay exits, a source familiar with the matter told the Boston Globe.
