Claudine Gay resigns after six months as Havard President - summary

What we know

• Harvard University President Claudine Gay has resigned from her position following numerous accusations of academic plagiarism and her testimony on antisemitism within the campus community.
• The interim president of the school will be Alan Garber, who currently serves as the provost and chief academic officer, while Gay resumes her faculty position.
• Calls for Gay’s resignation from the Jewish community heightened following her testimony in Congress on December 5, 2023, intimating that calls for the killing of Jews in the Israel-Hamas war were abhorrent, the BBC reported.
• Following this, it emerged that Gay had failed in some publications to provide academic sources as required.
• Claudine Gay holds the distinctive record as the first Black president in Harvard's 388-year history.

What they said

In a statement, Gay wrote, “After consultation with members of the Harvard Corporation, it has become clear that it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual... It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigour-two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am-and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fuelled by racial animus.” The Harvard Corporation said in a statement that Dr. Gay would resume her faculty position after resigning. "While President Gay has acknowledged missteps and has taken responsibility for them, it is also true that she has shown remarkable resilience in the face of deeply personal and sustained attacks. While some of this has played out in the public domain, much of it has taken the form of repugnant and, in some cases, racist vitriol directed at her through disgraceful emails and phone calls. We condemn such attacks in the strongest possible terms," the statement read.