BREAKING: Claudine Gay Resigns

Claudine Gay, the 30th President of Harvard University, has resigned after months of widespread criticism. This decision comes after an additional six charges of plagiarism were reported on by the Washington Free Beacon yesterday. Having taken over as university president in July of last year, her six-month tenure is the shortest in the almost 400 years of the University's existence. 

Credit: Reuters

Following Gay's testimony before Congress on December 5th, where she refused to condemn campus antisemitism and calls for genocide, a wide variety of groups inside and outside of Harvard University called for her resignation. On December 12, the Harvard Corporation had announced its “unanimous support” for Gay.

The Corporation’s statement at that time also addressed separate allegations of rampant plagiarism in Gay’s academic work.  On December 11, the Washington Free Beacon first reported that sections of Gay’s published work, including her doctoral dissertation, were entirely unattributed despite being identical to previously published papers. Following these allegations, several petitions were written and delivered to the Harvard Corporation calling for her immediate removal with hundreds of signatures from professors, students, and alumni.

While Gay previously requested corrections for a few of those papers, her official statement today did not admit wrongdoing. Instead, Gay said that “it has been distressing to have doubt cast upon my commitments to confronting hate and upholding scholarly rigor - two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am.” She also stated that she will be returning to the faculty of the University. 

Gay had been expected to break a chain of short presidencies: comparatively young when she began the role, she was meant to serve as President for an entire generation of Harvard undergraduates. Chosen after the shortest presidential search process on record, Gay’s unprecedentedly brief tenure reflects poorly on her sponsors within university leadership. 

According to a statement from the Harvard Corporation, Provost Alan M. Garber will serve as interim president of the university until a permanent replacement can be identified.