Embattled Harvard President Claudine Gay Announces Resignation

BOSTON, MA — Claudine Gay, the Harvard president whose short tenure has been mired with controversy, announced in an open letter Tuesday that she is resigning.

"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," Gay began in the letter. " ... 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’s resignation will solidify her presidency as the shortest in the university's history at just over six months long, according to The Harvard Crimson.

Since she was appointed president in July, Gay has faced several waves of public backlash as well as investigations by university officials after being accused of making antisemitic remarks and plagiarizing several of her scholarly articles, including her 1997 Ph.D dissertation.

Earlier this month, Gay asked the Harvard Corporation to investigate the allegations — which were first shared with The New York Post — independently, according to The Harvard Crimson. The Corporation created a three-person panel of political scientists with "no ties to Harvard" to analyze the specific allegations raised by the Post, while the Corporation's subcommittee conducted "a more comprehensive review of all of President Gay’s other published works from 1993 to 2019," the outlet reported.

This review did not include of Gay's Ph.D dissertation and only sought to identify research misconduct, which requires evidence that the action was taken "intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly," according to the Crimson. According to the review, Gay's alleged actions did not fit this description.

An assessment of Gay's Ph.D with regard to plagiarism has not yet been released.

Just hours before Gay announced her resignation, The Free Beacon reported that a new unsigned complaint filed with Harvard had alleged six new allegations of plagiarism, compounding the already extensive list of similar accusations against Gay.

At the beginning of December, Gay was heavily criticized for her testimony on antisemitism before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

During the Dec. 5 testimony, Gay and her counterparts at the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shied away from answering whether students calling for the genocide of Jews were breaking the code of conduct at Harvard, instead saying that the university 'embraces a commitment to free expression' unless it 'crosses into conduct that violates policies against bullying, harassment, intimidation.'

In a letter responding to the controversy, members of the Harvard Corporation said that while "calls for genocide are despicable and contrary to fundamental human values," they decided to reaffirm Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University.

In her resignation announcement letter Tuesday, Gay wrote that her "deep sense of connection to Harvard and its people has made it all the more painful to witness the tensions and divisions that have riven our community in recent months, weakening the bonds of trust and reciprocity that should be our sources of strength and support in times of crisis."

"Amidst all of this, 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," Gay said.

Gay added Tuesday that she will now "return to the faculty, and to the scholarship and teaching that are the lifeblood of what we do."