US elite university
Accusations of anti-Semitism and plagiarism: Harvard President Claudine Gay submits her resignation
Claudine Gay, president of the elite Harvard University in the USA, has submitted her resignation
© Kevin Dietsch / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP
After only around six months in office, the president of the US elite Harvard University, Claudine Gay, is stepping down. The decision follows allegations of plagiarism and strong criticism on their stance on anti-Semitism on campus.
In the face of massive criticism of her stance on anti-Semitism on campus, the president of the elite US university Harvard, Claudine Gay, submitted her resignation. The decision follows allegations of plagiarism and strong criticism of a hearing in the US Congress in which Gay and two other university presidents defended themselves against accusations that they had not done enough to combat anti-Semitism on campus. As a result, the president of the University of Pennsylvania had already resigned from her position.
“With a heavy heart, but with deep love for Harvard” She is resigning from her position, Gay said on Tuesday, shortly after the university newspaper “The Harvard Crimson” reported on this impending step. In her resignation letter, Gay said she had received personal threats and had been the target of “racial hostility.” As the university newspaper “Harvard Crimson” further reported, a provisional representative has already been appointed.
Claudine Gay was the first African American president at Harvard
In mid-December, Gay had averted resignation after the Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing body, backed her. Gay had previously been questioned about anti-Semitism at a congressional hearing. When asked whether students who call for the “genocide of Jews” on campus violate the university’s rules of conduct, she replied: “It depends on the context.”
In addition to this much-criticized statement, Gay was also confronted with accusations of plagiarism. The 53-year-old was accused of not having quoted properly in her publications. In July, Gay, who was born in New York to Haitian immigrants, was appointed the first African-American president in the history of the world-famous university near Boston, Massachusetts.
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There have been loud calls for his resignation in recent weeks, including from a group of more than 70 members of Congress. But patrons of the university and more than 700 faculty members also took their side.
Since the Islamist Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th, the dispute over the conflict in the Middle East has also broken out at universities and schools in the USA. At the beginning of December, the Republican-led Education Committee in the US Congress summoned the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). During the hearing, all three admitted anti-Semitic and Islamophobic incidents at their universities.