Claudine Gay, Harvard President, resigns due to accusations of plagiarism

On Tuesday, the esteemed US university’s student publication announced that Claudine Gay had resigned as president. This came after she was criticized for not addressing anti-Semitism in school and for allegedly plagiarizing.

Following concerns that Gay did not properly credit scholarly sources in her academic work, Gay came under fire in recent months. Her six-month term as the esteemed institution’s president was the shortest in the 388-year history of the Ivy League school.

The most recent charges surfaced on Tuesday and were posted anonymously in a conservative web publication.

Gay was also embroiled in controversy when, last month, she testified before Congress alongside the presidents of MIT and Pennsylvania, she refused to state categorically if advocating for the extermination of Jews was against Harvard’s code of conduct.

After her appearance before Congress, the Harvard Corporation, which oversees the institution, supported her; however, as the campus community responded to the Gaza war, they took issue with her response to the October 7 incident in Israel.

Her resignation was demanded by more than 70 lawmakers, including two Democrats, and by several well-known Harvard benefactors and graduates. Nevertheless, a letter endorsing Gay had been signed by almost 700 Harvard faculty members.

But since then, US media sources have discovered numerous alleged instances of plagiarism in her academic record. Even though the Harvard board looked into the claims last month and discovered two published papers that needed more citations, the board declared that she had not broken any rules on research misconduct.

Gay, 53, a political science professor born in New York to Haitian immigrants, became the university’s first Black president in July. She stated that her departure was in the “best interests” of the university in a letter announcing it.

Gay said, “It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigour. This is not a decision I came to easily. Indeed, it has been difficult beyond words.” She added that her resignation would allow Harvard to “focus on the institution rather than any individual.”