A day after announcing her resignation as president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay wrote an op-ed for The New York Times defending her tenure.
Gay said she stepped down from her position on Tuesday, just six months in the role, to stop political “demagogues” from using her in an attempt to undermine the university and the values it stands for.
“My hope is that by stepping down I will deny demagogues the opportunity to further weaponize my presidency in their campaign to undermine the ideals animating Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness, independence, truth,” she wrote.
Gay had come under sharp public scrutiny over her handling of antisemitism on campus since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, as well as accusations of plagiarism in some of her past academic writings. Republicans, led by GOP conference chair Rep. Elise Stefanik, called for her resignation after Gay and the presidents of Penn and MIT testified before a House committee last month.
Gay said she fell into a “well-laid trap” when she testified about how she handled antisemitic incidents on campus since Hamas’ attack on Israel.
“Yes, I made mistakes,” she wrote. “In my initial response to the atrocities of Oct. 7, I should have stated more forcefully what all people of good conscience know: Hamas is a terrorist organization that seeks to eradicate the Jewish state.”
At the hearing, she continued, “I fell into a well-laid trap. I neglected to clearly articulate that calls for the genocide of Jewish people are abhorrent and unacceptable and that I would use every tool at my disposal to protect students from that kind of hate.”
She went on to address the accusations of plagiarism.
“Most recently, the attacks have focused on my scholarship,” she wrote. “My critics found instances in my academic writings where some material duplicated other scholars’ language, without proper attribution. I believe all scholars deserve full and appropriate credit for their work.”
“When I learned of these errors, I promptly requested corrections from the journals in which the flagged articles were published, consistent with how I have seen similar faculty cases handled at Harvard,” she added.
Gay said she has been subjected to hateful racist messages and threats.
“My inbox has been flooded with invective, including death threats. I’ve been called the N-word more times than I care to count,” she wrote.
And she warned that the campaign against her is not just about her or Harvard.
“This was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society,” she wrote. “Campaigns of this kind often start with attacks on education and expertise, because these are the tools that best equip communities to see through propaganda. But such campaigns don’t end there. Trusted institutions of all types — from public health agencies to news organizations — will continue to fall victim to coordinated attempts to undermine their legitimacy.”
-Emily Mae Czachor contributed reporting.
