First black Harvard President becomes the shortest serving president after resigning over plagiarism accusations
The first black President of Harvard University resigned Tuesday, January 2, 2024.
The prestigious US schools student newspaper reported this, after she faced criticism over allegations of plagiarism and her handling of anti-Semitism on campus.
Claudine Gay was criticized in recent months after reports surfaced alleging that she did not properly cite scholarly sources in her academic work. Her time was the shortest presidency in the Universitys history.
The most recent accusations came on Tuesday, published anonymously in a conservative online outlet.
Gay was also engulfed by scandal after she declined to say unequivocally whether calling for g£nocid£ of Jews viol@ted Harvards code of conduct, during testimony to Congress alongside the heads of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania last month.
The universitys governing Harvard Corporation backed her after her appearance before Congress, but did criticize her response to the October 7 att@ck in Israel as the campus community reacted to the w@r in Gaza.
More than 70 lawmakers including two Democrats called for her resignation, while a number of high-profile Harvard alumni and donors had called for her departure.
Still, more than 700 Harvard faculty members had signed a letter supporting Gay.
The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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 368-year-old Harvard University, in Cambridge, outside Boston.