After weathering calls for her ouster over the school’s handling of campus antisemitism amid the Israel-Hamas war and her widely derided testimony in a congressional hearing last week, it was decided that Claudine Gay will keep her job as president of Harvard University.
“In this tumultuous and difficult time, we unanimously stand in support of President Gay,” Harvard Corp., the school’s governing body, said in a statement Tuesday.
“At Harvard, we champion open discourse and academic freedom, and we are united in our strong belief that calls for violence against our students and disruptions of the classroom experience will not be tolerated.”
Harvard University is trying to quell a revolt by many alumni and wealthy donors including investor Bill Ackman, who have slammed Claudine Gay’s handling of rising antisemitism on campus amid the Israel-Hamas war.
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Protests in support of Palestinians and against Israel have roiled US campuses since the Israeli invasion of Gaza following the Hamas attacks. Incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia have also jumped.
The criticism increasingly fed into a broader ideological battle over left-wing bias at elite universities. Republicans and some donors see the debate as an opportunity to reshape the higher education scenario in the US.
Gay, a longtime professor who became Harvard’s first Black president on July 1, was bolstered by support from more than 700 faculty members who signed a petition urging the school to resist political pressures “at odds with Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom.”
Before the university’s governing council announced its support for Gay, some former faculty members said Ackman had gone too far in questioning her credentials and appointment as Harvard president.
“Mr. Ackman and others are right to call attention to issues of antisemitism at his alma mater,” wrote David Thomas, president of Morehouse College and Ackman’s former professor at Harvard Business School. “To turn the question to the legitimacy of President Gay’s selection because she is a Black woman is a dog whistle we have heard before: Black and female equal not qualified. We must call it out.”
In the statement, Harvard emphasised that Gay has apologised for how she handled her congressional testimony and “committed to redoubling the university’s fight against antisemitism.”
The university also addressed allegations of plagiarism in Gay’s academic writings that had arisen in recent weeks. The university said it became aware of the accusations in late October and scrutinised Gay’s work at her request.
The review “revealed a few instances of inadequate citation,” the school said. “While the analysis found no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct, President Gay is proactively requesting four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications.”
Congressional Testimony
The criticism of Gay reached a fever pitch after she and two other university presidents testified at the Dec. 5 congressional committee hearing on antisemitism, which has drawn the ire of the White House, been lampooned on Saturday Night Live and forced out University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill.
The other college president who testified, Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth, received unequivocal backing from the school’s board last week.
All three administrators provided narrow legal responses over whether calling for the genocide of Jews is against school policy, fueling demands for them to quit or be fired. More than 70 members of Congress and other lawmakers had also called for her ouster. Elise Stefanik, the Republican from upstate New York who led that line of questioning, described their leadership as “totally unfit and untenable.”
While the board gave Gay a vote of confidence, it does not mean that the controversy will subside. Serious questions remain about how she will soothe tensions on campus and rebuild bridges with alumni.
Harvard, the oldest and richest US university, is facing potential damage to its reputation at a time when donors have curtailed giving and its $51 billion endowment’s returns have lagged behind peers.
Jason Furman, a professor who signed the faculty petition, acknowledged that Gay has made mistakes but said she’s the right person to confront antisemitism on campus and lead the university forward.
“She needs to fix some things, she needs to do some things better,” Furman, a top economic adviser in the Obama administration, told Bloomberg TV. “I think she’s the right person to do all of that.”
After officiating a menorah lighting ceremony for Hanukkah on campus on Tuesday, Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychology professor, said that Gay resigning would have accomplished little, a view he expressed in a Boston Globe opinion piece on Monday. “She didn’t handle the testimony well,” Pinker said in an interview. “I don’t think it’s because she harbors a trace of antisemitism.”
Federal Inquiries
Harvard Corp. has a dozen members, including Gay. Drawn from academia, business and philanthropy, the group includes Penny Pritzker, the ex-Commerce secretary; former American Express Co. head Ken Chenault; investor and Harvard Treasurer Timothy Barakett, and Shirley Tilghman, who was head of Princeton University.
Harvard still faces a series of federal inquiries, including an investigation by the US Education Department for alleged discrimination involving shared ancestry and one launched by the House Education and the Workforce Committee after the hearings last week.
