National Association of Scholars Calls For Harvard to Remove President Claudine Gay

Embattled Harvard President Claudine Gay, who faces intense and growing calls for her resignation, is finding no safe quarter with the National Association of Scholars (NAS), which is demanding the Ivy League University remove her from her post.

Gay is among a handful of university presidents facing scrutiny for testimony provided during a congressional hearing on Dec. 5.

The three leaders faced questions regarding student protests over the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. When asked by Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) whether calling for the genocide of Jewish people violated their respective schools’ code of conduct, Gay said, “Depends on the context.”

Gay added, “When it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct, and we do take action.”

The lack of a more concrete stance immediately sparked outrage across a nation — and more broadly, a world — seeing a spike in antisemitism since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas against Israel.

Despite Gay facing fierce backlash from her own campus community, Harvard’s governing body has rallied around her and is, thus far, taking no disciplinary action to remove her.

“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 Harvard Corporation said in a statement following its Dec. 12 meeting.

However, since Gay’s controversial comments during last week’s hearing, reports have surfaced alleging she plagiarized large portions of her doctoral thesis.

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While the Harvard president has denied the allegations, the NAS is citing them, along with her controversial statements during the congressional hearing, as the basis for her termination.

Gay’s answers on what Harvard would do to calls for genocide against Jews “were far from satisfactory, but they are not the only reason why she should be removed from the presidency,” NAS said in a statement released on Dec. 12.

The organization said:

Her performance on December 5 should be—to borrow a word she used repeatedly on that occasion—put into context. The context in this case consists of:

• Her shoddy professional work, which would by normal standards disqualify her for any academic appointment at Harvard.


• Her record of plagiarism.


• Her promotion of racist policies.


• Her vindictive and arbitrary administrative punishment of Harvard college members.

Some of this was known or knowable at the time of her appointment as president, but a great deal more is known today.

NAS also blasted Gay for her aim to use the university to advance “racial justice,” as laid out in a 2020 memo she authored. NAS says Gay sought to prioritize race in faculty appointments, leadership opportunities for non-white staff, and selectively favoring minority candidates for promotion to managerial and executive roles.

“None of this was hidden, though the general public appears to have little understanding as to what it meant and how forcefully President Gay would implement it,” NAS said. “Nor was it clear that the U.S. Supreme Court would strike down the controlling opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, which had given Harvard and many other universities what they took to be license to use racial preferences in a wide variety of academic contexts.”

NAS, continuing is attack on Gay’s credentials, added:

Gay has never deserved to be a member in good standing of the American academy, much less to be president of Harvard, and Harvard can only begin to restore its badly tarnished reputation when it has removed her from the presidency.

Lest any of the points mentioned here be thought insubstantial or uncorroborated, note:

• Christopher Rufo and Chris Benet have just obtained documentation that apparently proves that Gay plagiarized substantial portions of her doctoral thesis—not least in irony, from noted conservative political scientist Carol Swain.


• As noted a year ago by NAS’s David Randall, Gay, although promoted within the academic track, has never published an academic book. This is not a sin as plagiarism is, but it registers her obvious unfitness to be a professor at Harvard, much less its president.


• Chris Brunet also has shown how Gay’s administrative work at Harvard has consisted to a considerable extent of covering up real scandals or in groundlessly persecuting innocent professors, such as Roland Fryer.


• Gay argued forcefully in 2020 for the tighter imposition of the so-called “anti-racist” agenda at Harvard University—which is actually racist—including exhortation for, and announcement of her own plans to execute, racially discriminatory hiring practices.


• Since the October 7 mass murder of Israelis by Hamas, Gay has winked at the chronic harassment of Jews by Muslims and the far left at Harvard, and extenuated and protected it by calling it free speech.

Gay also has revealed extraordinary moral obtuseness by her inability to speak clearly to condemn the moral degenerates of Harvard who have glorified the butchery of Jews and, under the thin disguise of the slogan “From the River to the Sea,” called for the genocide of the Jewish nation of Israel.

The time has come to bring down the curtain on a presidential appointment that plainly had the support of campus activists and a fair number of faculty members—but which was from the beginning ill-founded, and is now a national embarrassment.

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