Harvard president to stay on job with support of board

Harvard University President Claudine Gay will continue to lead the university despite calls for her removal after controversial congressional testimony regarding campus antisemitism last week.

Gay, alongside the presidents of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Pennsylvania, was grilled by lawmakers last week as Congress focused on elite college campuses as the locus of rising antisemitism in higher education.

The three university leaders, when asked whether calls for Jewish genocide would be considered harassment, said it would depend on context and specific circumstances. The responses resulted in strong calls for all three to be removed from their jobs.

The Fellows of Harvard College, the more powerful of the school’s two governing boards, said Tuesday that Gay will not be removed from the job over the comments, days after Penn President Liz Magill chose to resign.

“As members of the Harvard Corporation, we today reaffirm our support for President Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University,” the board said. “Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing.”

The group also responded to criticism over the university’s reaction to the onset of the Israel-Hamas war in October, which came under fire from prominent alumni who said it was not strong enough in support of Israel.

“The University’s initial statement should have been an immediate, direct, and unequivocal condemnation,” of attacks by Hamas, the group said. 

The fellows also said Gay apologized for her comments to the congressional committee and said she is “committed to redoubling the University’s fight against antisemitism.”

More than 600 Harvard faculty signed a petition last week urging the board to keep Gay in her role, calling the congressional hearing “deeply politicized” and “clearly part of a strategy to discredit institutions of higher education.”

MIT’s governing board released a statement Thursday also showing support for its president, Sally Kornbluth.

Magill and Penn’s Board of Trustees chair resigned Saturday over her comments at the hearing.