‘As members of the Harvard Corporation, we today reaffirm our support for President Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University.’
Harvard President Claudine Gay will remain leader of the prestigious Ivy League school following her comments last week at a congressional hearing on antisemitism, the university’s highest governing body announced 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,” the Harvard Corporation said in a statement following its meeting Monday night.
The Harvard Crimson student newspaper first
reported on Dec. 12 that Ms. Gay will remain in office with the support of the Harvard Corporation following the conclusion of the board’s meeting.
“As members of the Harvard Corporation, we today reaffirm our support for President Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University,” the board
wrote, “In this tumultuous and difficult time, we unanimously stand in support of President Gay.”
During the weekend, Harvard’s governing board faced a hard choice to decide its president’s fate amid growing pressure from lawmakers and alumni donors to remove Ms. Gay from her post.
On Dec. 10, hundreds of Harvard faculty members
signed a letter supporting Ms. Gay. The letter urged the school “to defend the independence of the university and to resist political pressures that are at odds with Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom.”
Meanwhile, another
letter from “undergraduate students, alumni, and members of the Harvard community” states that they lost confidence in Ms. Gay and asked the boards to dismiss her. The letter had attracted over 1,100 signatures by Dec. 12.
During the testimony last week over anti-Semitism on campus, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) pressed Ms. Gay to answer whether “calling for the genocide of Jews and the elimination of Israel” violates Harvard’s codes of conduct. However, Ms. Gay gave closely guarded responses, saying it “depends on the context.”
Following the hearing, Ms. Gay and the presidents of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) have been under mounting criticism and asked to resign.
On Dec. 8, a bipartisan
group of over 70 House lawmakers demanded the governing board members of the three colleges fire their college heads.
A Harvard Jewish student group, Harvard Hillel,
criticized Ms. Gay following her testimony, calling her to take action against anti-Semitism on campus.
Ms. Gay released a
statement to clarify her points after the hearing, “Let me be clear: Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.”
Ms. Gay, who took office in July, is Harvard’s first black president. She also apologized in an
interview with the school’s newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, on Dec. 7.
“I am sorry. Words matter.” Ms. Gay said. “When words amplify distress and pain, I don’t know how you could feel anything but regret.”
“I got caught up in what had become at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures,” Ms. Gay said. “What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community—threats to our Jewish students—have no place at Harvard and will never go unchallenged. Substantively, I failed to convey what is my truth.”
Pressure
The UPenn president, Liz Magill,
resigned on Dec. 9, following a major donor
withdrawing his $100 million donation for the school and pressure from Pennsylvania lawmakers as well as criticism from the governor.
In response to Ms. Magill’s resignation, Ms. Stefanik posted on her
X, “One down. Two to go.” Ms. Stefanik wrote. “This is only the very beginning of addressing the pervasive rot of anti-Semitism that has destroyed the most ‘prestigious’ higher education institutions in America.”
“Harvard and MIT, do the right thing,” Ms. Stefanik added. “The world is watching.”
Meanwhile, MIT Corporation Chair Mark Gorenberg
wrote on Dec. 7 that the Committee of the MIT Corporation “entirely support President Kornbluth,” stating Ms. Kornbluth “has done excellent work in leading our community, including in addressing anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate, all of which we reject utterly at MIT.”
On Dec. 10, billionaire Harvard graduate Bill Ackman sent a letter to Harvard governing boards, posted on his
X, saying that “In her short tenure as president, Claudine Gay has done more damage to the reputation of Harvard University than any individual in our nearly 500-year history” all well as “catalyzed an explosion of anti-Semitism and hate on campus that is unprecedented in Harvard’s history.”
Harvard University is among multiple academic institutions that have faced intense criticism since more than 30 of its student groups signed a letter blaming Israel for being “entirely responsible” for the Oct. 7 attack, when Hamas terrorists launched a surprise assault into Israel, killing over 1,200 civilians, including Americans.
On Dec. 10, Christopher F. Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute think tank said he and writer Christopher Brunet had “obtained documentation demonstrating that Harvard President Claudine Gay plagiarized multiple sections of her Ph.D. thesis, violating Harvard’s policies on academic integrity.”
He accused Ms. Gay of “lift[ing] an entire paragraph nearly verbatim” from a 1990 paper by authors Lawrence Bobo and Franklin Gilliam.
According to a statement to the Boston Globe on Dec. 11, Ms. Gay said: “I stand by the integrity of my scholarship. Throughout my career, I have worked to ensure my scholarship adheres to the highest academic standards.”
The school is also among multiple schools and universities under civil rights
investigations by the U.S. Department of Education following allegations of anti-Semitism or Islamophobia since the start of the Israel–Hamas war.
The Epoch Times has reached out to Harvard for comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
