Harvard President Claudine Gay announced Tuesday she would step down just six months into her presidency amid a firestorm of controversy over antisemitism and plagiarism.
“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 wrote in a 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 comes amid a period of extreme turmoil at one of America’s most prestigious universities and marks the end of the presidency of the first Black president and second woman in Harvard’s nearly 400-year history.
CEOs, billionaires, important donors and Congress leaders were drawn into the controversy.
She noted that “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.”
In a letter Tuesday, the Harvard Corporation defended Gay and said they accepted her resignation “with sorrow.” The university’s governing body, said she showed “remarkable resilience in the face of deeply personal and sustained attacks.”
Gay was also hit by an ongoing plagiarism scandal and poor performance at a congressional hearing last month in which she and other university presidents failed to explicitly say calls for genocide of Jewish people constituted bullying and harassment on campus.
There have been tensions on some college campuses following the October 7 terror attacks by Hamas against Israel.
Gay was widely criticized after accusations of plagiarism emerged, including multiple instances of missing quotation marks and citations.
