Five Thoughts on Claudine Gay's Resignation as Harvard President

This afternoon Claudine Gay announced her resignation as President of Harvard University after just over six months on the job. 

Here are five thoughts.

First, I believe Gay stepped down over allegations concerning plagiarism rather than her response to campus anti-Semitism as suggested by Bess Levin at Vanity Fair including her infamous testimony on Capitol Hill. Had there been no accusations of plagiarism I believe Gay would still be on the job. When former President Obama intervened to save her job last month, I wrote:

However, if Gay does resign it will not be because of her tolerance of anti-Semitism, but because the plagiarism accusations keep piling up. Even former President Obama's word only goes so far.

And the hits just kept coming. 

Second, in her resignation statement, Gay played the race card:

It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor — two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am — and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.

Last I checked both former UPenn President Liz Magill and MIT President Sally Kornbluth are white. Kornbluth is also Jewish. The calls for their resignation had nothing to do with race let alone gender. 

Third, with that said, I don't think Kornbluth is going to resign despite Pershing Square Capital Management CEO Bill Ackman's turning his attention to her following Gay's announcement. Ackman took to X and asked, "Et tu, Sally?" Ackman, a Harvard alumnus, had been among the leading voices demanding Gay's resignation.

The reason I don't think Kornbluth is going anywhere is because MIT is fine with anti-Semitism just as is the case at Harvard. The only way Kornbluth steps down is if there is some other scandal involving her be it plagiarism, financial improprieties or scandal involving sexual assault and/or race/gender/sexual orientation bias. As for anti-Semitism, the only way I see that costing Kornbluth her job is if such an incident results in the death of a Jewish student or students. Yes, I think someone has to die before Kornbluth is held answerable for campus anti-Semitism and even then, I don't think it is guaranteed.

Fourth, as was the case with Liz Magill, while Gay had to go, I don't think her successor will be any more inclined to combat campus anti-Semitism. As I wrote following Magill's resignation:

As ineffectual as Magill's leadership was on the question of anti-Semitism, the fact remains that anti-Semitism on university campuses in this country run far deeper than Liz Magill or for that matter Claudine Gay at Harvard and Sally Kornbluth at MIT. While Magill's resignation is warranted that alone won't solve the problem as anti-Semitism is seeped into academia. 

In order to counter this culture, UPenn would need to name a President from outside academia to shake things up. The same would be true should Gay and Kornbluth step down at Harvard and MIT, respectively. Naturally, there is no guarantee this will come to pass.

Even if UPenn does have a successful change in leadership, the level of anti-Semitic indoctrination absorbed by students will take years to deprogram. 

Which brings me to my fifth and final thought on the subject. The Harvard Crimson editorial page vehemently opposed Gay's resignation on the grounds that it was "a national outrage manufactured by conservative activists intent on discrediting higher education." So even though Gay couldn't publicly bring herself to say genocidal threats against Jewish students violated Harvard's code of conduct and there were legitimate grounds to question Gay's scholarship, it is dismissed as something invented out of whole cloth by conservatives and thus there is no need to seriously address the matter. 

Although I have plenty of issues with conservatives such as New York Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik who has been doing her happy dance in the wake of Gay's resignation, this is most certainly not a manufactured crisis. Unfortunately, as long as those at Harvard (and at other institutions) insist this is a manufactured crisis invented by conservatives then campus anti-Semitism will continue to be tolerated and will thrive while plagiarism will be something at which to look the other way.