Harvard president to remain on job despite anger over testimony on antisemitism
Harvard President Claudine Gay will remain in her role, with the university’s top governing board on Tuesday voicing full-throated support for her after days of backlash and calls for her removal over recent testimony at a hearing on antisemitism on college campuses.
“In this tumultuous and difficult time, we unanimously stand in support of President Gay,” Harvard’s board said in a statement early Tuesday.
“Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing,” the board said.
Gay has faced intense criticism and calls for her removal from lawmakers and prominent donors in recent days after her Dec. 5 testimony before a House panel, during which she and two other university presidents would not say directly whether calls for the genocide of Jews would violate their universities’ codes of conduct. Gay later apologized and clarified her remarks, saying that such calls “are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.”
Gay also has seen a surge of support in recent days. This week, faculty members and alumni signed letters requesting that she stay in Harvard’s top job and calling on university leaders to defend Harvard’s independence and resist political interference.
Still, others circulated a petition calling for her removal.
She has been criticized for her past work and statements related to diversity, equity and inclusion. And allegations surfaced in conservative media and from right-wing activists that Gay had plagiarized portions of her academic work, including her 1997 PhD thesis.
The Harvard Corporation, the university’s highest governing body, knocked down those allegations in its statement, writing that, at Gay’s request, “distinguished political scientists” had conducted an independent review and found “a few instances of inadequate citation” but “no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct.”
Gay is “proactively requesting four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publication,” the corporation wrote.
Several scholars were dismissive of the allegations. Gary King, a professor and the director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard, wrote in an email: “The allegations of plagiarism in Claudine Gay’s dissertation are false and absurd. Her dissertation and every one of the numerous drafts I read leading up to the final version met the highest levels of academic integrity.
“Also, please think about how implausible these allegations are: if you were going to commit plagiarism, would you plagiarize your advisor’s work and expect to get away with it? … No one could have read her dissertation as claiming to have invented the methods in my book, which she cites prominently.”
Lawrence D. Bobo, a professor and dean of social science at Harvard, said in an email, “I find myself unconcerned about these claims as our work was explicitly acknowledged.”
But Carol Swain, a retired professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University, said she thinks Gay should resign. Gay in her dissertation did not properly cite research Swain had done, Swain said, listing her work in the bibliography but not engaging with it in the text.
Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who wrote about the allegations of plagiarism, wrote on social media Tuesday, “Harvard has sacrificed its academic integrity on the altar of intersectionality.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center was also critical of Harvard’s decision, issuing a statement saying: “President Gay survives to continue as university president, but will Jewish students on campus survive her tenure? Will Harvard finally act against harassment of Jewish students?”
And Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), whose exchanges with the college presidents sparked the harshest criticism, wrote on social media Tuesday: “There have been absolutely no updates to @Harvard’s code of conduct to condemn the calls for genocide of Jews and protect Jewish students on campus. The only update to Harvard’s code of conduct is to allow plagiarists as president.”
Gay and the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology took questions from lawmakers at the recent hearing about how they handle antisemitic behavior on campus. The schools and others have faced allegations that they have allowed antisemitism to run rampant on their campuses since the eruption of war in Israel and Gaza on Oct. 7 inflamed campus tensions.
Liz Magill, the Penn president, resigned Saturday.