Harvard president to remain after anger over testimony on antisemitism

Harvard President Claudine Gay will remain in her role, with the university’s top governing board on Tuesday voicing full-throated support for her after days of backlash and calls for her removal over recent testimony at a hearing on antisemitism on college campuses.

“In this tumultuous and difficult time, we unanimously stand in support of President Gay,” Harvard’s board said in a statement early Tuesday.

“Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing,” the board said.

Gay has faced intense criticism and calls for her removal from lawmakers and prominent donors in recent days after her Dec. 5 testimony before a House panel, during which she and two other university presidents would not say directly whether calls for the genocide of Jews would violate their university’s codes of conduct. Gay later apologized and clarified her remarks, saying that such calls “are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.”

Gay also has seen a surge of support in recent days. This week, faculty members and alumni signed letters requesting that she stay in Harvard’s top job and calling on university leaders to defend Harvard’s independence and resist political interference. Still, others circulated a petition calling for her removal — and allegations surfaced in conservative media and from right-wing activists that Gay had plagiarized portions of her academic work, including her 1997 PhD thesis.

The Harvard Corporation, the university’s highest governing body, knocked down those allegations in its statement, writing that, at Gay’s request, “distinguished political scientists” had conducted an independent review and found “a few instances of inadequate citation” but “no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct.”

Gay is “proactively requesting four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publication,” the Corporation wrote.

Gay and the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology took questions from lawmakers at the recent hearing about how they handle antisemitic behavior on campus. The schools and others have faced allegations that they have allowed antisemitism to run rampant on their campuses since the eruption of war in Israel and Gaza on Oct. 7 inflamed campus tensions.

Liz Magill, the Penn president, resigned Saturday after condemnation of her testimony during the hearing. Like Gay, Magill would not say that calling for the genocide of Jews necessarily violated campus rules on speech, instead saying “it is a context-dependent decision.”

Asked the same question, Gay told lawmakers such speech would be “at odds with the values of Harvard” and, if “speech crosses into conduct, that violates our policies.” After her remarks, more than 70 members of Congress signed a letter calling for her resignation — and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce opened an investigation into the learning environment at Harvard. The university also is facing a separate probe from the Education Department, which is investigating allegations of antisemitism or Islamophobia at some institutions.

Gay later apologized for her remarks in an interview with the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, saying “threats to our Jewish students … have no place at Harvard and will never go unchallenged.”

The Harvard Corporation’s statement, signed by all 11 fellows of Harvard College, lauded Gay’s later statements: “President Gay has apologized for how she handled her congressional testimony and has committed to redoubling the University’s fight against antisemitism.”

Gay has been at Harvard since 2006 and served as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences before she became president in July. She is the first Black person to hold the job.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.