Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned Tuesday after just six months in office, her presidency rocked by her handling of campus antisemitism and a plagiarism scandal that called into question her fitness to lead the nation’s oldest university.
The Harvard Corporation said that Ms. Gay, a political scientist, will step down as president and resume her position on the faculty, praising her “deep and unwavering commitment to Harvard and to the pursuit of academic excellence.”
Provost and Chief Academic Officer Alan M. Garber will take over as interim president while the board conducts a search for a new leader.
After consulting with corporation members, Ms. Gay said “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.”
“Sad as I am to be sending this message, my hopes for the university remain undimmed,” said Ms. Gay in an email to the Harvard community. Her tenure as president was the shortest in the university’s 388-year history.
The Harvard Corporation, headed by Biden administration official Penny Pritzker, thanked Ms. Gay for her “brief and selfless” commitment to Harvard, and referred only briefly to the more than 40 instances of alleged plagiarism in her scholarly writings.
“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,” said the corporation statement.
The board also said Ms. Gay, the first Black and second woman president of Harvard, had been subjected to racist 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 board said.
Ms. Gay was named the 40th president of Harvard on July 1 after serving for five years as the dean of the arts and sciences faculty, succeeding outgoing President Lawrence Bacow.
Calls for her resignation soared after a Dec. 5 House committee hearing at which she and two other university presidents said that whether demanding “genocide for Jews” would violate their conduct codes would depend on the context.
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned days later, along with Penn Board of Trustees Chairman Scott Bok. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has stood behind Sally Kornbluth, the third president to testify before the committee.
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