Former Harvard University president says she was ousted by ‘lies, insults’
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Harvard University’s former president, Professor Claudine Gay, stepped down Jan 2 after coming under attack over plagiarism accusations.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
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NEW YORK – Harvard University’s former president, following her resignation, on Jan 3 said she had made mistakes, but insisted that she was the target of a sustained campaign of lies and personal insults.
Professor Claudine Gay stepped down on Jan 2 after coming under ferocious attack over plagiarism accusations and her response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the campus of the powerhouse university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, amid the Israel-Hamas war.
“Those who had relentlessly campaigned to oust me since the fall often trafficked in lies and ad hominem insults, not reasoned argument,” she wrote in The New York Times.
“They recycled tired racial stereotypes about black talent and temperament. They pushed a false narrative of indifference and incompetence.
“It is not lost on me that I make an ideal canvas for projecting every anxiety about the generational and demographic changes unfolding on American campuses: A black woman selected to lead a storied institution. Someone who views diversity as a source of institutional strength and dynamism.”
Prof Gay was criticised in recent months after reports surfaced alleging that she did not properly cite scholarly sources.
The most recent accusations came on Jan 2, published anonymously in a conservative online outlet.
“Morally bankrupt testimony”
Prof Gay was also engulfed by scandal after she declined to say unequivocally whether calling for genocide of Jews would violate Harvard’s code of conduct, during testimony to Congress in December alongside the heads of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania.
Prof Gay, who made history as the first black person to be president of Harvard, said she was targeted because she believed “that a daughter of Haitian immigrants has something to offer to the nation’s oldest university”.
The 53-year-old was born in New York and is a professor of political science.
Her downfall comes after the university’s governing Harvard Corporation had initially backed her after the public relations disaster of the congressional testimony.
But the body did criticise Harvard’s initial response to the Hamas Oct 7 attacks
Israel’s offensive has reduced much of Gaza to rubble and killed at least 22,000 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Harvard Corporation said Prof Gay had “shown remarkable resilience in the face of deeply personal and sustained attacks”.
The House Republican who challenged Prof Gay during her testimony with the question about whether free speech extended to calling for genocide of Jews
“Neither the resignation from Claudine Gay nor the statement from the Harvard Corporation included any apology for the morally bankrupt testimony,” Representative Elise Stefanik wrote on social media. AFP
