Harvard President Resigns Thanks to Far-Right Attacks Elevated by Media
Harvard University President Claudine Gay resigned Tuesday amid a conservative-stoked firestorm over her response to questions about antisemitism on campus and allegations of plagiarism.
Gay served a total of just six months as university president, the shortest tenure in the school’s nearly four-century-long history. She was the first Black person and just the second woman to lead Harvard.
“It is with a heavy heart but a deep love for Harvard that I write to share that I will be stepping down as president. This is not a decision I came to easily,” Gay said in a letter to the school. “But, after consultation with members of the Corporation, it has become clear that it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual.
Gay received national scrutiny in December when she, MIT president Sally Kornbluth, and University of Pennsylvania president Elizabeth Magill testified before the House Education and Workforce Committee about their responses to incidents of antisemitism on their campuses.
Committee Chair Elise Stefanik asked the university presidents whether students chanting “intifada” violated the schools’ codes of conduct. Each president said it would depend on the context, with Gay pointing out that chants she finds “personally abhorrent” could still be protected under freedom of speech.
But the video clip that went viral—thanks to the right—showed the university presidents stumbling after Stefanik asked whether calls for genocide against the Jewish people should be forbidden, leaving out the longer disingenuous line of questioning.
The university presidents tried to explain their stances after the congressional hearing. In a video the following day, Magill clarified that “speech alone is not punishable,” but calls for genocide would be “harassment or intimidation.” Magill ultimately resigned in mid-December, prompting Stefanik to triumphantly tweet, “One down. Two to go.”
In the weeks following the hearing, far-right activists began to accuse Gay of plagiarism. The charges were led by Christopher Rufo, a prominent Ron DeSantis ally, anti-woke warrior, and liar about having a Harvard degree.
Media coverage of Gay’s alleged plagiarism reached a height not typically seen for academia. As Paul Waldman wrote for The New Republic in December, “there’s no question that the accusations against Gay are being offered in utter bad faith, and the charges are inseparable from the political context in which they’re being made.”
He argued that the examples of Gay’s supposed plagiarism “amount to academic misdemeanors—real, but evidence of occasional sloppiness rather than malicious theft.”
“But you can’t separate this controversy from its context, which is that nobody proclaiming their outrage actually cares about the proper application of academic citation protocols any more than your average Republican members of Congress sincerely worry about antisemitism as something other than a bludgeon they can use against those they perceive as their enemies,” Waldman wrote.
Stefanik celebrated Gay’s resignation, bragging that she “will always deliver results” and branding the outgoing academic head as “morally bankrupt.” Her committee has also launched an investigation into antisemitism on the Harvard, MIT, and UPenn campuses.
Representative Jerry Nadler, the most senior Jewish member of Congress, excoriated his Republican colleagues in December for moves like that investigation, which “weaponize Jewish lives for political gains” while in reality doing nothing to “genuinely counter” antisemitism.
It does not seem to have occurred to Stefanik or Republicans in general, who regularly pride themselves on being the protectors of free speech, that they have essentially taken a cudgel to free speech on college campuses. Gay is the latest casualty in GOP attempts to essentially police free speech—and she won’t be the last.