Harvard University President Claudine Gay announced Tuesday that she will step down as head of the prestigious university, following weeks of controversy over campus politics and her own academic record.
“It is with great regret but with deep love for Harvard that I write to share that I will be stepping down as president,” Gay, 53, wrote in the emotional letter.
“[I]”It has become clear that it is in Harvard’s best interest for me to resign so that our community can…focus on the institution rather than any individual,” he explained of the decision.
Calls for Gay’s resignation began in the fall, when she failed to condemn more than 30 Harvard student groups that published a letter blaming Israel for the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack.
He then appeared before Congress on December 5, where he refused to say that anyone who called for the genocide of Jews at the university would be punished.
In his resignation, Gay cited how he had been the target of racism since the attacks, writing: “It has been distressing to have my commitments to confront hate and uphold academic rigor – two core values that are central to who I am – called into question.” . —and terrifying to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.”
Inaction on anti-Semitism on campus and Gay’s disastrous appearance before Congress led Rabbi David Wolpe, a visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School, to resign from a panel formed by Gay to advise on anti-Semitism because there was no ” “no sense of urgency, no feeling of anger, no feeling.” feeling of disgust”, in the face of the “urgent crisis” that lay ahead of them.
Despite that, Gay said in his resignation that he hoped to represent everyone and make them feel welcome as president.
Claudine Gay’s tenure as president of Harvard is the shortest in the school’s history. fake images
“I considered myself particularly blessed by the opportunity to serve people around the world who saw in my presidency a vision of Harvard that affirmed their sense of belonging: their sense that Harvard welcomes talented and promising people, from all backgrounds.” imaginable, to learn. and grow with each other. ‘
Political science professor Gay will now return to a position as a regular faculty member after a six-month tenure as a professor, the shortest in Harvard history.
Harvard Chancellor and Chief Academic Officer Gerber Alan Garber will take over as interim president.
The Harvard Corporation – the university’s highest governing body – also confirmed Gay’s resignation in its own statement, which echoed his own, saying that he had “shown remarkable resilience in the face of deeply personal and sustained attacks.
“While some of this has manifested itself in the public domain, much of it has taken the form of disgusting and in some cases racist vitriol directed at her through embarrassing emails and phone calls. “We condemn these attacks in the strongest possible terms.”
Gay’s role was the first time a black leader led the country’s most prestigious university. David McGlynn
Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, said Gay’s departure was overdue.
“It was the right decision that should have happened sooner. It shouldn’t have taken so long. There was a clear lack of leadership. His resignation was justified,” he told The Post.
“Jewish students are being verbally attacked.”
Gay, who has been on the Harvard faculty since 2006, apologized a few days after his appearance in Congress in an interview with the Crimson, which addressed growing concerns about Jewish safety at the university.
He faced six new allegations of plagiarism that brought the total number of complaints against him to more than two dozen. REUTERS
“I’m sorry,” he told the publication. “Words matter.”
Harvard supported Gay at the time, including issuing a letter from professors asking the administration not to bow to political pressure, but his reputation was later hit by accusations of plagiarism in his academic work.
Just one day before he resigned, a flurry of six new accusations brought the total of accusations against him to almost 50.
Harvard President Claudine Gay resigns
Claudine Gay resigned on January 2. AP
This is how we got here:
The Post first contacted Harvard on Oct. 24 of last year for comment on 27 allegations that Gay had stolen words, phrases or even entire sentences from the work of other scholars.
The three works seen by The Post range from a 1993 article about Gay’s graduate school days to 2017, when she was Dean of Social Sciences at Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Jonathan Swain, the university’s senior executive director of media relations and communications, initially asked for more time to review the allegations but then did nothing.
On October 27, The Post received a 15-page letter from prominent attorney Thomas Clare, who identified himself as Harvard and Gay’s defamation attorney.
Despite being informed of the allegations months earlier, the university only admitted to its own investigation into Gay’s alleged plagiarism in December, after his appearance before Congress.
“On December 9, fellows reviewed the results, which revealed some instances of inappropriate citation,” the statement in support of Gay said.
“While the analysis found no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct, President Gay proactively requests four corrections to two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications.”
However, a member of Harvard’s student Honor Council called for Gay’s resignation and accused the school’s governing body of having one standard for the administrator and another for the student body.
Gay faced more calls for him to resign after his disastrous House testimony on anti-Semitism. @harvardpsc/Instagram
“Homosexuals are getting off lightly,” said the student, who is part of the council in charge of deciding sanctions for classmates caught plagiarizing, in a letter published anonymously in the Harvard Crimson.
The author went on to say that first-time plagiarism violations, which can be as small as dropped quotes or incomplete or missing citations, typically result in a probationary period and removal of the student’s “good standing” status, which prevents prevent them from studying abroad or even graduating, the author wrote. Recurrence may result in students being forced to withdraw from the university for two semesters.
Accusations of plagiarism even continued Monday in the hours before Gay resigned, with a claim that he had taken nearly half a page of material verbatim from David Canon’s 1999 book “Race Redistricting and Representation: The Unintended Consequences of Black Majority Districts” for his own 2001 campaign article, according to a complaint obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Canon, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin, disagrees that Gay’s work constitutes plagiarism.
“I’m not at all worried about the fares,” he said in a statement to the Washington Free Beacon. “This is not even close to an example of academic plagiarism.”
“Both Dr. Gay and I are defining basic terms like Section 2 and Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, covered jurisdictions, and bailout. Good definitions of these terms would have to use similar language or they wouldn’t be accurate! Canon said.
Students at the university welcomed Gay’s resignation.
“I’m glad to see that Harvard has decided that new leadership is needed to start getting us out of all of these scandals and combating anti-Semitism on campus,” Harvard student Alex Bernat told the Post on Tuesday.
“I am very hopeful that Acting President Garber will do just that. Additionally, I think we need to be mindful of asking for transparency in the investigation into his plagiarism and how someone with so many academic integrity issues was elected to the Harvard presidency,” he added.
House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, who grilled Gay during his disastrous appearance before Congress, pulled no punches after learning of the resignation.
“The resignation of Harvard’s plagiarizing, anti-Semitic president is long overdue,” Stefanik’s fiery statement read.
“Claudine Gay’s morally flawed answers to my questions made history as the most viewed congressional testimony in the history of the United States Congress. “Her responses were absolutely pathetic and lacking the moral leadership and academic integrity required of the president of Harvard,” she insisted.
“Our robust congressional investigation will continue to move forward to expose the rot at our most “prestigious” higher education institutions and hold the American people accountable,” the Republican concluded.
With post cables
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Source: vtt.edu.vn