NEW YORK – The president of Harvard University resigned on Jan 2, after coming under ferocious attack over plagiarism accusations and her response to anti-Semitism on campus amid the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Professor Claudine 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.

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 alongside the heads of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania in December.

The Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing council, said in a statement that provost and chief academic officer Alan Garber will become interim president, and it will undertake a search for a new leader.

The letter made reference to Prof Gay’s acknowledgment of “missteps”.

Prof Gay, who made history as the first black person to be president of the powerhouse university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said in her resignation letter that she had been subjected to personal threats and “racial animus”.

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 the university’s initial response to the Hamas Oct 7 attacks that Israel said killed 1,140 people inside Israel and saw around 240 people taken hostage.

Israel’s offensive has reduced much of Gaza to rubble and killed at least 22,185 people, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

‘Racist vitriol’

More than 70 lawmakers, including two Democrats, demanded her resignation, while a number of high-profile Harvard alumni and donors also called for her departure.

Still, more than 700 Harvard faculty members had signed a letter supporting Prof Gay and her job had appeared to be safe.

The resignation, first reported by the student-run newspaper the Harvard Crimson, was confirmed shortly after by Prof Gay herself.

“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,” Prof Gay, who will remain a member of faculty, said in a statement.

“When my brief presidency is remembered, I hope it will be seen as a moment of reawakening to the importance of striving to find our common humanity – and of not allowing rancour and vituperation to undermine the vital process of education,” she added.

She also wrote that she had faced threats to her safety and “racial animus” in the wake of the furore over her handling of claims of mounting anti-Semitism on campus.

The Harvard Corporation said that Prof Gay had “shown remarkable resilience in the face of deeply personal and sustained attacks”.

“While some of this has played out in the public domain, much of it has taken the form of repugnant and in some cases racist vitriol directed at her through disgraceful e-mails and phone calls. We condemn such attacks.”

In the United States, the anti-Semitism on campus controversy came amid a rise in attacks and violent rhetoric targeting Jews and Muslims, including at universities, since the Israel-Hamas war erupted.

The president of another elite Ivy League institution, Ms Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, had already been forced to resign.

The House Republican who challenged Prof Gay out during her testimony with the question about whether free speech extended to calling for genocide of Jews celebrated the latest academic’s downfall.

“Harvard knows that this long overdue forced resignation of the anti-Semitic plagiarist president is just the beginning of what will be the greatest scandal of any college or university in history,” said Representative Elise Stefanik, a Harvard alum.

Former US treasury secretary Larry Summers, himself a former president of Harvard, praised Prof Gay for her decision to step down.

“I admire Claudine Gay for putting Harvard’s interests first at what I know must be an agonisingly difficult moment,” he said in a statement.

Mr Summers had been among the first to criticise Harvard’s response to Hamas’ Oct 7 attack on Israel.

He said he was “sickened” by the school’s initial silence after some student groups placed the blame for the attack solely on Israel, although he later tempered his criticism after Prof Gay spoke out against the violence.

In his statement, Mr Summers also lauded Prof Gay’s interim successor, Dr Garber, as “a superb choice” and said “there will be much to reflect on as Harvard sets its course forward”.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, a close US ally, has claimed that a “whopping wave of anti-Semitism” has “seeped onto university campuses”.

Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, has described it as a “cancer”.

Even before the hearing, however, many big donors were rethinking their commitments to Harvard, the oldest and richest US university.

Billionaires such as Idan Ofer and Leslie Wexner pulled their support, while many less wealthy alumni also curtailed donations.

Hedge fund manager Seth Klarman and US Senator Mitt Romney, who are both alumni, accused the university of ignoring the safety of Jewish students as pro-Palestinian protests on campus intensified amid Israel’s invasion of Gaza

Former student and multi-million-dollar donor Bill Ackman claimed in a letter to Harvard’s governing boards that “President Gay’s failures have led to billions of dollars of cancelled, paused and withdrawn donations to the university”.

Prof Gay, 53, was born in New York to Haitian immigrants and is a professor of political science who in July became the first Black president of 368-year-old Harvard.

“Leadership failure and denial of anti-Semitism have a price. Hope glorious Harvard University learns from this dismal conduct,” wrote new Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz in response to Prof Gay’s departure. AFP, BLOOMBERG