In her resignation letter, 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".
ADVERTISEMENTHarvard University President Claudine Gay resigned Tuesday amid plagiarism accusations and criticism over testimony at a congressional hearing.
She faces accusations of being unable to "definitively affirm" that advocating for the genocide of Jews on campus would breach the school’s conduct policy.
Harvard’s first black president announced her departure just months into her tenure in a letter to the Harvard community.
In her letter, she said it has been “distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor - two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am - and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.”
“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,” she added.
The Harvard Corporation expressed "great sadness" over the resignation and thanked Gay for her “deep and unwavering commitment to Harvard and the pursuit of academic excellence.”
Alan M. Garber, provost and chief academic officer, will serve as interim president until Harvard finds a replacement, the board said in a statement.
Gay and the presidents of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania came under fire last month for their lawyerly answers to a line of questioning from New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, who asked whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate the college’s code of conduct.
The three presidents had been called before the Republican-led House Committee to answer accusations that universities were failing to protect Jewish students amid rising fears of antisemitism worldwide.
Gay said it depended on the context, adding that when “speech crosses into conduct, that violates our policies.”
The answer faced swift backlash from Republican and some Democratic lawmakers as well as the White House.
Gay later apologized, telling The Crimson student newspaper that she got caught up in a heated exchange at the House committee hearing and failed to properly denounce threats of violence against Jewish students.
“What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged,” Gay said.
The House committee announced days after the hearing that it would investigate the policies and disciplinary procedures at three universities.
Plagiarism accusations by conservatives
Following the congressional hearing, conservative activists intensely scrutinized Gay's academic career, uncovering multiple alleged instances of plagiarism in her 1997 doctoral dissertation.
University's governing board initially rallied behind Gay, saying a review of her scholarly work turned up “a few instances of inadequate citation” but no evidence of research misconduct.
Days later, the Harvard Corporation revealed that it found two additional examples of “duplicative language without appropriate attribution.”
The board said Gay would update her dissertation and request corrections.