Harvard University president Claudine
Gay, under fire over testimony she gave about anti-Semitism on campus, will
remain in her job after a meeting of the institution’s governing body issued a
statement backing her on Tuesday.
Gay has been engulfed by criticism after
she declined to say unequivocally whether calling for genocide of Jews violated
Harvard’s code of conduct as she testified before Congress alongside the heads
of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania.
“It depends on the context,” she told
lawmakers in one tense exchange.
The Harvard Corporation, one of the
university’s two governing boards, said in a statement, “we today reaffirm our
support for President Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University.”
But the body did criticise the
university’s initial response to the Hamas October 7 attacks that Israel said
killed 1,200 people inside Israel and saw around 240 people taken hostage.
Israel’s offensive has reduced much of
Gaza to rubble and killed at least 18,200 people, mostly women and children,
according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
President Gay’s ‘Failures’
In the United States, the controversy
has come amid a rise in attacks and violent rhetoric targeting Jews and
Muslims, including at universities, since the Israel-Hamas war erupted.
“So many people have suffered tremendous
damage and pain because of Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack, and the University’s
initial statement should have been an immediate, direct, and unequivocal
condemnation,” the corporation said.
“Calls for genocide are despicable and
contrary to fundamental human values.
“President Gay has apologized for how
she handled her congressional testimony.”
Rabbi Getzel Davis, a Harvard campus
chaplain and member of the Hillel Jewish student movement, said in response to
the corporation’s announcement that “the most important thing for Jewish
students at Harvard and Harvard Hillel is that the culture changes.”
“We look forward to continuing to work
with President Gay and other senior Harvard administrators on… enforcing
policies to protect Jewish students,” he said.
University of Pennsylvania’s president
Liz Magill resigned in the wake of her responses to Congress, and pressure had
mounted on Gay both inside and outside of Harvard to follow suit.
More than 70 lawmakers including two
Democrats called for her resignation, while a number of high-profile Harvard
alumni and donors have called for her departure.
In excess of 700 Harvard faculty members
signed a letter supporting Gay.
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 University, in Cambridge, outside
Boston.
Ryan Enos, professor of government at
Harvard, said ahead of the corporation’s endorsement of Gay that “the reason
that she has been pressured to resign is because of political pressure from
politicians trying to shape universities in their image.”
“One of the bedrocks of a free society,
one of the most important things for a free society, is that universities are
not run by the state.”
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.”
Tad Elmer, a resident of Cambridge where
Harvard is based, said “colleges and universities are not political (and)
should not be political actors.”
AFP
