(New York) The president of the prestigious American University Harvard, Claudine Gay, announced Tuesday that she was resigning, after accusations of plagiarism and a tense hearing in Congress on the fight against anti-Semitism on campuses.
“It is with a heavy heart, but with a deep love for Harvard, that I write to you to announce that I will be stepping down as president,” Claudine Gay, 53, said in a resignation letter published Tuesday.
This political science professor – who in July became the first black president of Harvard University, located near Boston – has been under fire in recent weeks.
She was targeted by accusations of plagiarism linked to her university work, fueled by a conservative site, and by criticism linked to her responses, during a parliamentary hearing on the fight against anti-Semitism on campuses, to the elected official Republican Elise Stefanik, who likened the calls of certain students for the “Intifada” to an incitement to “a genocide against Jews in Israel and around the world”.
Since the bloody attack by Hamas in Israel on October 7, followed by deadly reprisals by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, the conflict has unleashed passions in the most renowned American universities.
Tuesday, December 5, in a tense atmosphere, Claudine Gay and her counterparts from the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Elizabeth Magill and Sally Kornbluth, answered questions from elected officials of the House of Representatives for five hours.
When Mme Stefanik asked whether “calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard’s harassment policy, yes or no?” », Mme Gay responded: “It can, depending on the context,” before adding: “If it’s directed against a person.” »
“If the speech becomes action, it can become harassment,” replied Mme Magill to the same question. “It’s a decision that depends on the context.”
Their responses, which went viral, caused an outcry even at the White House, whose spokesperson, Andrew Bates, said it was “incredible that this should be said: calls for genocide are monstrous”.
“Foul attacks”
“It was complicated to see doubt hovering over my commitments to confronting hatred and respecting academic rigor… and frightening to be the subject of personal attacks and threats fueled by racism,” explained Claudine Gay in his resignation letter.
She becomes the second president of the Ivy League – which brings together eight elite universities – to resign. In December, Elizabeth Magill, of the University of Pennsylvania, resigned in the face of pressure.
More than 70 parliamentarians, including two Democrats, as well as former students and renowned donors had called for the departure of Mr.me Gay. The president, however, received the support of the educational community and was retained in her position in mid-December.
The governing body of Harvard University, which accepted the resignation of Mr.me Gay, praised his “remarkable resilience in the face of ongoing and deeply personal attacks.”
“While part of this affair took place in a public manner, a large part took the form of vile and in some cases racist attacks against her via shameful emails and phone calls,” the institution specifies in a press release.
Republican Elise Stefanik, for her part, described this resignation on the X network as “very late”, assuring that it was the “beginning of what will constitute the biggest scandal of any university in history”.
Born in New York into a family of Haitian immigrants, Claudine Gay will have served the shortest presidency in the history of the university since its founding in Cambridge, near Boston, in 1636.