After weeks of backlash following an inflammatory Congressional hearing, Harvard’s President Claudine Gay resigned after being in office for only six months. It was also in part because of accusations of plagiarism and controversies regarding antisemitism on Harvard’s campus. The current political climate and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East set the stage for such a significant event.
On Oct. 7, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas brutally attacked NOVA, a music festival in Israel, killing hundreds of people and taking several as hostages. This was part of a larger attack against Israel that resulted in the death of more than 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of more than 100more. Shortly afterwards, antisemitism began to increase on college campuses around the United States, specifically at many Ivy League universities, such as Cornell University, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University. These institutions of higher education have seen numerous antisemitic protests and rallies take place on school grounds. As a result, many Jewish students have felt significantly less safe, and many students here at Schreiber feel troubled by the rise in hate speech.
“Antisemitism has been showing up on college campuses on completely new levels, and it’s pretty terrifying. Personally, I know that my own friends and family in college are currently struggling with how to cope as a Jewish person on campus, especially when there is so much political discourse over something that is so personal to us. The best thing we can do is come together and offer community and support,” said junior Charlotte Packer, the co-founder of the Jewish Culture Club at Schreiber.
According to a survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League, before the attack on Israel by Hamas, 67 percent of Jewish students in colleges across America said they felt physically safe on campus while 66 percent felt emotionally safe on campus. However, after Oct. 7, only 46 percent feel physically safe and 33 percent feel emotionally safe.
At Harvard, Dr. Gay was widely criticized for not immediately responding to the acts of hate that were happening under her watch. She eventually released a statement addressing the issue, but many still felt that she didn’t properly denounce Hamas, their actions, and antisemitism in general, including students here at Schreiber.
“I think that by Dr. Gay not condemning harmful acts against Jewish students, she ultimately put them in a position where they don’t feel as safe as they should,” said sophomore Lucas Gordon.
Soon, Dr. Gay wrote another, more vigorous statement, deciding to confront the subject head on. Despite this, antisemitic demonstrations continued to occur at Harvard and many other universities, and many Harvard alumni and donors felt that Dr. Gay and the administration were not doing enough to protect Jewish students. As a result, Dr. Gay and the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Liz Magill and Sally Kornbluth respectively, were called before Congress to discuss the problematic behavior that was occurring on their universities’ campuses.
The congressional hearing took place on Dec. 5 before the House of Representatives’ Education and Workforce Committee. Throughout the hearing, Gay, Magill, and Kornbluth all made it clear that they were strongly against antisemitism and were making efforts to get rid of it on their campuses. However, when New York Republican Representative Elise Stefanik asked the three university leaders whether calls for the genocide of Jews violated their school policies and codes of conduct, they failed to answer. Dr. Gay responded to the question by saying, “It can be, depending on the context.”
Following the hearing, the three university presidents were met with outrage for their nonchalant responses to a question that should have drawn a very straightforward answer. On Dec. 8, more than 70 members of Congress sent letters to board members of Harvard, MIT, and UPenn, demanding for Gay, Kornbluth, and Magill to be fired. Students at Schreiber were distressed by their responses to the question at the hearing as well.
“Her comments were inhumane and make the entire university of Harvard an unsafe place for Jewish students,” said freshman Zephion Aaronson.
On Saturday, Dec. 9, Magill resigned, only four days after she and the two other presidents appeared before Congress. On Dec. 10, accusations of Dr. Gay plagiarizing sections of some of her works, including her PhD dissertation at Harvard from 1997, arose.
More plagiarism accusations began to come to light, and soon enough, Dr. Gay was under even more fire. The accusations were that Dr. Gay misused academic sources, differing from copying sections of sources she used word for word without inserting quotation marks, to paraphrasing texts without citing the sources.
Dr. Gay resigned on Jan. 2, and since her resignation, she has warned her colleagues that the effort to remove her is part of a broader attack on higher education, elite universities in particular. That being said, Gay has admitted that she was wrong in how she responded to the Oct. 7 attack and the antisemitism that took place on her campus.