Claudine Gay, first Black woman president at Harvard, to resign

Harvard's embattled president Claudine Gay announced that she is resigning from her post Tuesday afternoon.

In a statement, Gay said "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."

The Harvard Crimson and The Boston Globe were the first to report that Gay will step down Tuesday. Her tenure is the shortest in the university's history, according to The Crimson.

The university and the Harvard Corporation, which overseas the university and is headed by Penny Pritzker, the former Commerce Secretary under President Barack Obama, had previously stood by Gay in public statements after she was scrutinized over her response to antisemitism on campus and allegations of plagiarism that surfaced in recent months.

Gay, who was the first Black woman to helm the Ivy League institution, said her decision to step down came after consulting with the university’s governing board and she will still remain on faculty.

“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 wrote on Tuesday.

The Harvard Corporation said in a statement that it had accepted Gay’s resignation “with sorrow” and praised her “deep and selfless” commitment to the university.

“While President Gay has acknowledged missteps and has taken responsibility for them, it is also true that she has shown remarkable resilience in the face of deeply personal and sustained attacks,” the Harvard Corporation wrote.

“While some of this has played out in the public domain, much of it has taken the form of repugnant and in some cases racist vitriol directed at her through disgraceful emails and phone calls. We condemn such attacks in the strongest possible terms."

Gay’s resignation follows University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill’s decision to step down in December after facing intense criticism from lawmakers, alumni and school donors. Republicans scorched the elite college presidents, along with Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth, at a more than five-hour campus antisemitism hearing on Dec. 5.

But Gay arguably got the worst of the scrutiny during the hearing. She was criticized for her legalistic tone as Republican lawmakers pressed the administrators on their efforts to combat antisemitic hate speech on campus.

At the hearing, House Education and Workforce Chair Virginia Foxx(R-N.C.) slammed Harvard as “ground zero for antisemitism” following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), a Harvard alum, called for Gay’s resignation after an adversarial line of questioning.

After the hearing, Stefanik called for the leaders to be fired. On Tuesday, she claimed Gay’s resignation as a victory.

“I will always deliver results,” Stefanik said in a statement. “The resignation of Harvard’s antisemitic plagiarist president is long overdue. Claudine Gay’s morally bankrupt answers to my questions made history as the most viewed Congressional testimony in the history of the U.S. Congress. Her answers were absolutely pathetic and devoid of the moral leadership and academic integrity required of the President of Harvard.”

Stefanik, one of the top Republicans in the House, also touted the committee’s investigation into antisemitic incidents on college campuses. She said the panel is looking to “expose the rot in our most ‘prestigious’ higher education institutions and deliver accountability to the American people.”

The House Education and Workforce Committee also announced in December that it would investigate the allegations of plagiarism against Gay.

Foxx said in a statement on Tuesday that Gay's resignation was "welcome news" but added that "the problems at Harvard are much larger than one leader and the Committee's oversight will continue."

“Postsecondary education is in a tailspin,” Foxx added. “There has been a hostile takeover of postsecondary education by political activists, woke faculty, and partisan administrators.”

Gay, who completed her doctorate at Harvard in 1997 and taught at the university, is facing allegations that she plagiarized passages of other scholars' writings in her dissertation and other academic papers.

A review in December found that Gay used “duplicative language without proper attribution." It further found that her actions were “regrettable" yet did not rise to the level of “research misconduct” as the incidences were not “intentional or reckless.”

Gay said in her resignation letter that she considered herself “blessed by the opportunity to serve people from around the world who saw in my presidency a vision of Harvard that affirmed their sense of belonging.”