Here’s what led up to Harvard president Claudine Gay’s resignation
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By Zoe Sottile and Eva Rothenberg, CNN
(CNN) — After months of scrutiny, Harvard president Claudine Gay announced her resignation Tuesday, making hers the shortest term in the university’s history.
Gay became Harvard’s first Black president in July 2023 after a career studying American political behavior and serving in other administrative roles. Her resignation comes less than a month after she and other leaders of prestigious universities testified before Congress about antisemitism on campus in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. Critics attacked Gay and the other presidents for their statements on free speech and antisemitism, which snowballed into further scrutiny of Gay and allegations of plagiarism in her past.
Her resignation comes just one day after The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative a news site, published a report saying new allegations of plagiarism had been filed in a complaint to the university.
She announced her resignation in a letter to the Harvard community, saying that the decision was “difficult beyond words.” She also described facing “personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.”
Here’s what we know about the months preceding Gay’s resignation.
October 7: Harvard student groups blame Israel for attack
A coalition of student groups at Harvard released a statement blaming Israel for the violence shortly after Hamas launched a devastating attack on Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking more than 200 people hostage, according to Israeli authorities. The letter linked the attacks to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and called on Harvard to “take action to stop the ongoing annihilation of Palestinians.”
The letter drew sweeping condemnation from business leaders, who called for the students whose groups signed the statement to be blacklisted. A spokesperson for the coalition later wrote in a statement that the group “staunchly opposes violence against civilians — Palestinian, Israeli, or other.”
October 10: Gay condemns Hamas
Several days after the Hamas attack, Gay released a statement condemning the “terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas” and affirming that “no student group — not even 30 student groups — speaks for Harvard University or its leadership.” Some donors and alumni were still outraged by what they saw as Gay’s belated response to the controversy. Several major donors who support Israel cut ties with the university.
November 28: US Department of Education launches investigation
The Department of Education opened an investigation into Harvard “for discrimination involving shared ancestry,” an umbrella term that encompasses both antisemitism and Islamophobia. To date, Harvard is one of some 20 colleges and universities that the federal government has been investigating since the October attacks. A handful of school districts across the county are also being investigated.
December 5: Gay testifies before Congress
As tensions on campus simmered, Gay and the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were called to testify before Congress about disciplinary actions taken in the face of antisemitism and faculty hiring practices.
Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York asked Gay if Harvard would take disciplinary action against students or applicants who say “from the river to the sea” or “intifada,” the Arabic word for “uprising.”
The two terms are sometimes used at pro-Palestinian protests and Stefanik argued that the use of “intifada” in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict is “a call for violent armed resistance against the state of Israel, including violence against civilians and the genocide of Jews.”
Gay said that while she did see that speech as “abhorrent” and “at odds with the value of Harvard,” the university still embraces “a commitment to free expression even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful.”
When that speech crosses into conduct that violates Harvard’s policies against bullying and harassment, or incites violence or threatens safety, then action is taken, she said.
Her testimony stoked calls for her resignation. Gay responded on X, writing: “There are some who have confused a right to free expression with the idea that Harvard will condone calls for violence against Jewish students. Let me be clear: Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.”
In the following days, Rabbi David Wolpe, a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Divinity School, announced his resignation from the university’s Antisemitism Advisory Group, citing both antisemitic events on campus and Gay’s testimony. And a bipartisan group of 72 lawmakers sent a letter to the governing boards of Harvard, Penn, and MIT urging them to remove their university leaders.
In an interview with the Harvard Crimson, Gay apologized for her testimony. “I got caught up in what had become at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures,” Gay told the student newspaper. “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.”
December 9: Plagiarism allegations levied at Gay
As calls continued for Gay to resign, plagiarism charges against the embattled president were first publicly circulated by conservative activists and later reported by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication. Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund CEO and vocal supporter of Israel, posted claims that Gay had plagiarized some of her academic work on social media and accused her (without evidence) of being hired only to fulfill diversity requirements.
The Harvard Corporation, the university’s top governing body, said that it “became aware in late October of allegations regarding three articles” written by Gay.
December 15: Gay corrects two academic articles
Gay requested corrections to two scholarly articles published in 2001 and 2017 following allegations of plagiarism.
Harvard commissioned an independent review of Gay’s writings following the plagiarism accusations. Gay denied the allegations, saying in a statement last week that she stands by the integrity of her scholarship.
On December 9 the Harvard Corporation announced that the review revealed inadequate citations in a few instances but “no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct.” It said then that Gay would request “four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications.”
December 20: House expands probe to include plagiarism
The US House Committee on Education and the Workforce widened its existing probe, focused on antisemitism on campus, to include the allegations of plagiarism against Gay.
The committee announced it had “begun a review of Harvard University’s handling of credible allegations of plagiarism by President Claudine Gay over a period of 24 years,” Committee Chair Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina, wrote in a letter to Penny Pritzker, the senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation.
Foxx demanded the corporation provide information on Harvard’s response to the accusations by December 29.
December 21: Gay requests more corrections
A Harvard spokesperson said the university reviewed more of Gay’s academic work, and the president plans to update her 1997 PhD dissertation to correct additional instances of “inadequate citation.” Harvard did not use the word “plagiarism” in its review of Gay’s work, and the university said Gay’s past mistakes did not constitute a punishable offense under its research misconduct rules.
December 29: Harvard granted extension to respond to House on plagiarism scandal
A committee spokesperson said Harvard would be given more time to respond to the lawmakers’ request for documents and information.
“Given the holidays and office closures, we are working with Harvard on a prompt production of documents that takes that into account,” the spokesperson said.
January 1: New plagiarism allegations levied
CNN spoke with two plagiarism experts about new allegations of plagiarism against Gay, as first reported by the conservative publication, the Washington Free Beacon.
Both said elements of Gay’s 2001 article, “The Effect of Minority Districts and Minority Representation on Political Participation in California,” constituted plagiarism.
Several sentences from scholar David T. Canon’s 1999 book appear in Gay’s article. But Gay failed to use quotation marks or cite the work in two passages. His end notes are almost verbatim in her footnotes.
Canon told CNN on Tuesday: “I am not at all concerned about the passages in the Free Beacon article concerning my work. Both Dr. Gay and I are defining basic terms. Good definitions of these terms would have to use similar language or they would not be accurate. This isn’t even close to an example of academic plagiarism.”
But experts noted that the feelings of the author are not a factor when assessing a case of potential plagiarism.
Jonathan Bailey, a plagiarism and copyright consultant who runs the site Plagiarism Today, told CNN Gay’s resignation was “likely the best thing she could do for her and the school.”
“The plagiarism scandals have become a tremendous distraction for both her and the school. While another researcher with a similar pattern of issues would likely not be forced to resign or face termination, she is both the president of Harvard and the center of a very politically charged story. Her situation is unique,” he said.
Michael Dougherty, a professor of philosophy at Ohio Dominican University who has written two books on plagiarism, told CNN over email, “The problem here is that readers of Gay’s text cannot, from the text itself, tell whose voice is speaking in the text,” he said.
He added that academics and students are obligated to write their own sentences and give credit when words originate with someone else, using quotation marks, footnotes in the right place, block quotes, and the like.
“The apparent failure to use quotation marks means that David Canon’s authorship over these words is suppressed, even though Canon is mentioned elsewhere,” he said.
January 2: Gay resigns, citing ‘racial animus’
Gay announced her resignation just six months after taking office.
“It is with a heavy heart but a deep love for Harvard that I write to share that I will be stepping down as president,” Gay wrote in a letter to the Harvard community. “After consultation with members of the Corporation, 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 with a focus on the institution rather than any individual.”
“Amidst all of this, 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,” Gay wrote.
The Corporation said the search for a new president would “begin in due course,” but did not specify an exact timeline.
Gay said in her letter she would return to a faculty position “and to the scholarship and teaching that are the lifeblood of what we do.”
CNN’s Matt Egan, Melissa Alonso, and Sabrina Souza contributed to this report.
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This story has been updated with additional developments.
