Claudine Gay has resigned as the President of Harvard University resigned Tuesday, the prestigious US school’s student newspaper reported.
Gatekeepers News reports that this followed her criticism over allegations of plagiarism and her handling of anti-Semitism on campus.
Gay was criticized in recent months after reports surfaced alleging that she did not properly cite scholarly sources in her academic work.
Having spent six months as the President of the prestigious institution, her tenure was the shortest in the 388-year history of the Ivy League university.
The most recent accusations came Tuesday, published anonymously in a conservative online outlet.
Gay was also engulfed by scandal after she declined to say unequivocally whether calling for a genocide of Jews violated Harvard’s code of conduct, during testimony to Congress alongside the heads of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania last month.
The university’s governing Harvard Corporation backed her after her appearance before Congress but did criticize her response to the October 7 attack in Israel as the campus community reacted to the war in Gaza.
More than 70 lawmakers including two Democrats called for her resignation, while several high-profile Harvard alumni and donors had called for her departure.
Nevertheless, more than 700 Harvard faculty members had signed a letter supporting Gay.
However, since then US media outlets have unearthed several instances of alleged plagiarism in her academic record.
Although Harvard’s board investigated the allegations last month and found two published papers that required additional citations, the board, said that she did not violate standards for research misconduct.
Gay, 53, was born in New York to Haitian immigrants and is a professor of political science who in July became the first Black president of the University.
In a letter announcing her resignation, she said it was in the “best interests” of the university for her to step down.
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.”
