On the day that most college presidents would be delicately polishing their press releases and brushing up on their Latin for the inauguration ceremony, Claudine Gay found herself embroiled in a rather more intense academic tradition: a congressional hearing. Presumably not the type of oral exam she had in mind when she took the job at Harvard.
Gay, inaugurated as Harvard’s 30th president just this September and the first Black woman to hold the position, resigned Tuesday amid swirling accusations and a plagiarism scandal that arrived with all the grace of a freshman term paper hit with ChatGPT. Her departure comes after a particularly disastrous turn on Capitol Hill in December, where she and the presidents of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania played a rousing round of “how not to answer a question on genocide” in front of a deeply unamused Congress.
Gay’s performance during the hearing on campus antisemitism was described by critics as evasive, legalistic, and not entirely in keeping with the expected candor of the nation’s oldest university. Her comments were closely followed by anonymous plagiarism claims, first highlighted in conservative publications, which ballooned into a full-blown scandal with the stamina of a tenured political science professor.
Harvard’s governing board initially closed ranks, firmly declaring their support of Gay. But in a stunning display of how quickly ivy can wilt under the right conditions, that support evaporated faster than a research grant in July. Facing intensifying pressure from donors, lawmakers, and Harvard alumni whose pockets may well be deeper than Widener Library, Gay tendered her resignation, noting that it was in the best interests of the university for her to step aside. The phrase “without distraction” may have got more airtime than any of her actual publications.
Now, stepping quietly and academically into the role of interim president is Alan M. Garber, a health economist who, as the university noted with all appropriate gravity, has served as the provost of Harvard since 2011. A man whose public profile is so subtle that students could be forgiven for mistaking him for the economics department’s Wi-Fi password, Garber is now charged with steering the institution through a rather awkward identity crisis involving race, academic integrity, and what exactly a university president is supposed to say when asked about hate speech.
While some faculty are decrying Gay’s ouster as a capitulation to partisan pressure and a targeted attack on diversity in academia, others have taken less of a philosophical stance and more of a “please make the nightly news stop talking about us” approach. Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans are declaring victory in what they view as a necessary cultural correction, while Democrats remain divided between defending academic freedom and not wanting to explain what footnoting is to voters.
As the dust settles and Harvard prepares to search for its 31st president, the echoes of Gay’s short tenure may linger, not just in the administration halls but in the way universities address free speech, discrimination, and the fine print in their faculty bios.
Harvard may be used to century-long legacies but for now it is finding out what a two-semester presidency looks like in the age of social media, congressional subpoenas, and Google Docs.
Apparently the toughest test at Harvard isn’t in the classroom. It’s the job interview that comes after.