Claudine Gay Resigns From Harvard Amid Anti-Semitism Scandal, Alan Garber Named Interim President

Gay is the second Ivy League university president to step down following congressional testimony on campus antisemitism last month that drew intense criticism. University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned her post on Dec. 9.

Gay had also faced criticism over the school's initial statement on Hamas' Oct. 7 invasion of Israel. Critics called the statement tepid, particularly in the wake of a letter from a coalition of student groups that blamed the attack on Israel. The Department of Education has also opened a civil rights investigation into one reported instance of a Jewish Harvard student being targeted on campus.

[...] Gay, the first Black president in the school's history, will also become its shortest-tenured; she has served for just over six months. In addition to her handling of antisemitism, she was also under fire for allegations of plagiarism in her research papers. A new wave of plagiarism accusations surfaced this week.

Alan Garber, Harvard's Jewish provost, will serve as the school's interim president, the Harvard Corporation, announced. In November, Garber said that he had regrets about his school's initial response to the Oct. 7 attack.

Alex Bernat, a junior at Harvard, said he hopes Gay's resignation is the beginning of a larger reckoning on antisemitism and academic integrity among its leadership.

Bernat said he was disappointed to see that Gay would be staying on the faculty in light of allegations that she plagiarized parts of her dissertation. He said he wants to see more transparent investigations into possible plagiarism than the Harvard Corporation has so far offered.

"The plagiarism standards appear to be more stringent for undergraduates, including first semester freshmen, than Harvard's president, who's supposed to be the pinnacle of academic scholarship," Bernat said. "It's inappropriate for any university to keep around a top-tier administrator or even a regular professor who had violated academic honesty policies to the degree Claudine had."

Bernat, who is Jewish, said he has spoken to Alan Garber, the school's provost and interim president, a few times, and he believes Garber will do a better job at tackling antisemitism on campus. He said Garber, who was raised Jewish, may have a "better understanding of what antisemitism is."