Faced with a new round of accusations over plagiarism in her scholarly work and despite the rumored back-channel intercession of Barack Obama, Harvard University’s first Black president, Claudine Gay, has resigned.
Gay’s tenure began on July 1, 2023 and ended on January 2, 2024 — six months total, the shortest of any Harvard president ever. She was the institution’s first Black president, and the second woman to lead the university.
N.Y. Times: “Support for Dr. Gay’s nascent presidency began eroding after what some saw as the university’s initial failure to forcefully condemn the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and some pro-Palestinian student responses. Outrage grew in early December after Dr. Gay gave what critics saw as lawyerly, evasive answers before Congress when asked whether calls for the genocide of Jewish people were violations of school policies.”
All Gay had to do was unequivocally condemn anti-Semitism without any ifs, ands or buts. But instead she hopscotched and equivocated around, and now she’s toast.
“The December congressional hearing also led to the ouster of Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, whose support had already been shaken in recent months over her refusal to cancel a Palestinian writers conference. She resigned as Penn’s president four days later.”