Harvard students call for Gay’s resignation in editorial
Two students at Harvard University called for the resignation of Claudine Gay, the university president, after a series of scandals “plagued our beloved university.”
Gay has faced growing pressure and calls for her resignation after dealing with allegations of plagiarism, as well as criticism over her response to antisemitism on campus.
The students wrote an op-ed in the school paper, The Harvard Crimson, in which they argued Harvard’s president has a “deeply challenging managerial job” and that she failed.
“Our doubts began in the wake of the attacks on Oct. 7. Without question, Gay botched her public response to the crisis,” the students wrote. “Now, on top of these blunders, it has surfaced that Gay plagiarized portions of multiple academic papers. The situation seems to worsen with every passing week.”
Gay, alongside the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology presidents, appeared before Congress to testify about their responses to a rise of antisemitism on their campuses since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war.
The accusations of plagiarism mounted when The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative outlet, found four papers of Gay’s from the 1990s with plagiarism concerns.
The Harvard Corporation said an analysis found no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct. Gay reportedly is “proactively requesting” four corrections in two articles, and to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from original publication.
“President Gay may be a good person. She may even be a praiseworthy scholar, despite the allegations. But that isn’t enough to remain president. The leader of the world’s foremost university must be held to a higher standard, one that Gay has unfortunately failed,” the students wrote.
The Crimson’s editorial board wrote a separate op-ed arguing that while Gay has concerning allegations against her, she should not resign, “at least, not now.”
The editorial board said the members still have faith in their leader and they oppose her resignation because “we are not blind to what has driven this news cycle — a national outrage manufactured by conservative activists intent on discrediting higher education.”
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