Harvard President Resigns Amid Controversy Over Antisemitism Testimony and Plagiarism Claims Transcript

After weeks of intense scrutiny, Harvard University President Claudine Gay resigned today. William Brangham has the latest.

Gay’s resignation came after she was scrutinized over two different issues. She was heavily criticized for her testimony during a congressional hearing about rising antisemitism on college campuses and Harvard University’s response to it. Separately, critics alleged she plagiarized some of her academic writings and revealed examples where she borrowed some exact language from other scholars. Gay denied plagiarizing anyone, but said she would add more citations to some of her previous works. She was the first Black leader of Harvard, and now has had the shortest tenure of any Harvard President. Harvard’s Provost and Chief Academic Officer, Alan Garber will serve as interim president. Hilary Burns of the Boston Globe has been covering all this, and she joins me now. Claudine Gay was under fire for weeks, but seemed to have kept her job until today when new plagiarism revelations emerged. Is that what finally broke the dam here?

I think that’s right. Claudine Gay, as you said, has been stuck in a series of interlocking crises since the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel. She’s been criticized for not doing enough to combat antisemitism on campus amid pro-Palestinian protests. Then there was the botched congressional hearing on December 5th. She survived that hearing largely because of support from faculty and students. But in recent weeks, there’s been this near constant drumbeat of plagiarism accusations and support of Gay has withered.

On these plagiarism accusations, some of Gay’s supporters said everyone needs to recognize that these were ideological opponents of Gay’s who were bringing out these accusations and they were against her and her push for diversity at Harvard. But of the many plagiarism examples cited, for instance, if I was a student at Harvard and had done some of the things she has been found to have done, what would’ve happened to me?

That’s a good question. Students at Harvard face disciplinary proceedings when they’re accused of plagiarism. It’s taken very seriously, so many within the Harvard community have said this appears to be a double standard where students are held to this high bar, and here is the president of the university with dozens of accusations against her work.

I want to read an excerpt of Gay’s resignation letter here. She said, “It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and 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.” The Harvard Corporation alluded to the racist vitriol that had been directed towards Gay as well, and many of her supporters say we can’t overlook the fact that this was a Black woman that was subject to all of these attacks.

That’s right. Many people that we’ve spoken with have pointed to the racial animus involved in these accusations and criticism of her at large. I think that the fact that the plagiarism accusations were first reported by a conservative outlet and then pushed out by conservative activists, that definitely played a role in the feeling that there was a political agenda at play here. I think that that really confused members within the Harvard community who said, “On the one hand, some of these plagiarism accusations look serious, and on the other hand, we don’t want politicians or anyone outside of the university meddling in our business and telling us what to do.”

I want to just double back to this issue of the antisemitism at Harvard. As you’d mentioned, there was this criticism of antisemitic incidents that were happening at Harvard and the university’s response to it, as well as her congressional testimony, which as you alluded to, she seemed to be making very lawyerly responses to questions over whether or not it was okay for anyone on campus to call for the genocide of Jews. What does your reporting tell you about how central that really was to the attacks on her and to her eventual resignation?

Well, we don’t know exactly at this point what the straw that broke the camel’s back was, but we know that before the plagiarism accusations, Gay was coming from a damaged seat. She was already facing so much backlash for that congressional hearing. Donors, alumni were very unhappy with how things were going at Harvard. They saw very frequent pro-Palestinian rallies, big rallies with hundreds or even over a thousand students participating in a couple instances that were calling for a ceasefire, and they were questioning how this pro-Palestinian point of view could be so mainstream at Harvard. It’s been a really complicated and tumultuous path for her since October 7th, and the scandals have really overlapped at this point.

All right. Hilary Burns of the Boston Globe, really appreciate you helping us navigate all of this. Thank you very much.

Thank you for having me.