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Claudine Gay Steps Down as President of Harvard

The resignation marks the shortest presidency in the university’s history

Published: January 2, 2024
  |   By Chris Karr
Claudine Gay Steps Down as President of Harvard

Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned Tuesday following criticisms regarding antisemitism on campus and increasing accusations of 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,” she wrote in a letter to the school community posted to X by WBZ-TV Boston reporter Kristina Rex. “This is not a decision I came to easily. Indeed, it has been difficult beyond words because I have looked forward to working with so many of you to advance the commitment of academic excellence that has propelled this great university across centuries.”

After consulting with members of the Corporation, Gay said it was “in the best interests of Harvard” for her to step down so the “community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual.”


“Gay’s resignation — just six months and two days into the presidency — comes amid growing allegations of plagiarism and lasting doubts over her ability to respond to antisemitism on campus after her disastrous congressional testimony Dec. 5,” The Harvard Crimson reports. “Gay weathered scandal after scandal over her brief tenure, facing national backlash for her administration’s response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and allegations of plagiarism in her scholarly work.”

The outlet said Harvard provost Alan M. Garber will serve as the university’s interim president as the search for Gay’s successor commences.

A timeline of the recent controversies compiled by The Boston Globe begins with criticisms aimed at Gay for not swiftly condemning Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups for claiming the Israeli government was “entirely responsible for all the unfolding violence.”

Though the embattled university president issued statements intended to counter such criticisms on Oct. 9, Oct. 10, and Oct. 12, the fallout escalated.

Former Harvard president Larry Summers said the university’s leadership “fails to meet the needs of the moment,” two philanthropists resigned from the Kennedy School board, and the Wexner Foundation, a nonprofit that donated about $2.5 million to Harvard in 2021, ended its ties with the university.

On Nov. 28, about one month after Gay assembled a group dedicated to combatting antisemitism on campus, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation of Harvard.

During a Dec. 5 testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.-R) asked Gay if “calling for the genocide of Jews violate[s] Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?”

“It can be, depending on the context,” replied Gay, who testified alongside University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill and MIT President Sally A. Kornbluth.

When asked the same question again by Stefanik, Gay said, “antisemitic rhetoric, when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation — that is actionable conduct. We do take action.”

The exchange, which went viral on X, preceded billionaire Bill Ackman’s call for Gay to be removed from her position.


On Dec. 10, a report co-written by Christopher Rufo alleged that Gay was a plagiarist. Subsequent allegations of plagiarism continued to surface, including a claim that she stole the language of another author’s acknowledgement and used it in her own.


The Harvard Corporation, the governing body of the Ivy League school, voted to keep Gay on Dec. 12.

“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 on Dec. 12, per The Wall Street Journal.

About one week later, Rep. Virginia Foxx (N.C.-R) deemed the allegations of plagiarism “credible” in a letter to a senior fellow at Harvard Corporation.

The letter announced a review of the university’s handling of the allegations, noting that “federal funding to Harvard is conditioned upon the school’s adherence to the standards of a recognized accreditor. Harvard’s accrediting body … maintains Standards for Accreditation (Standards) that emphasize the paramount importance of academic and institutional integrity. Compliance with these standards is a requirement to maintain accreditation.”

Foxx included a quote from Anne Williamson, a Miami University political science professor, whom Gay was accused of plagiarizing.

“[I’m] angry,” Williamson told The New York Post. “My first reaction is shock. The second reaction is puzzlement. … All she had to do is give me a credit.”

On New Year’s Eve, the Crimson editorial board published an op-ed calling for Gay’s resignation.

A Jan. 1 report from The Washington Free Beacon claimed there are currently 50 plagiarism allegations against Gay.

“The scope of Gay’s plagiarism … appears to afflict half of her published works,” the outlet writes.


“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 in her departing letter.

She added that she will return to the faculty to pursue scholarship and teaching – “the lifeblood of what we do.”

“When my brief presidency is remembered, I hope it will be seen as a moment of reawakening to the importance of striving to find our common humanity – and of not allowing rancor and vituperation to undermine the vital process of education,” she concluded.

“TWO DOWN,” Stefanik wrote on X, referencing the resignation of Gay and Magill, who stepped down from the University of Pennsylvania on Dec. 9.

“Harvard knows that this long overdue forced resignation of the antisemitic plagiarist president is just the beginning of what will be the greatest scandal of any college or university in history,” the representative added.


Author Ibram X. Kendi reacted to the news on X by denouncing "racist mobs."

“Racist mobs won’t stop until they topple all Black people from positions of power and influence who are not reinforcing the structure of racism,” he wrote. “What these racist mobs are doing should be obvious to any reporter who cares about truth or justice as opposed to conflicts and clicks.”

He added: “Too often mainstream reporters join the racist mob or give credibility – as they did in this case – just as they did a century ago.”


Gay, who took office on July 1, was Harvard’s first black president.

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