Harvard University President Claudine Gay will remain in office, the Harvard Corporation announced in a statement Tuesday morning. Her future had been in question after her testimony before Congress about antisemitism last week.
"As members of the Harvard Corporation, we today reaffirm our support for President Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University. 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 Harvard Corporation said in a statement addressed to the Harvard community.
"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. Calls for genocide are despicable and contrary to fundamental human values," the statement continued. "President Gay has apologized for how she handled her congressional testimony and has committed to redoubling the University’s fight against antisemitism."
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The Crimson student-run newspaper was first to report the news that Gay had the support of the Harvard Corporation – the university's top governing body.
"In this tumultuous and difficult time, we unanimously stand in support of President Gay. At Harvard, we champion open discourse and academic freedom, and we are united in our strong belief that calls for violence against our students and disruptions of the classroom experience will not be tolerated," the Harvard Corporation said in its statement. "Harvard’s mission is advancing knowledge, research, and discovery that will help address deep societal issues and promote constructive discourse, and we are confident that President Gay will lead Harvard forward toward accomplishing this vital work."
The decision comes after two days of previously scheduled meetings between the Harvard Corporation and the Harvard Board of Overseers.
Gay has faced a firestorm of criticism and a chorus of calls for her to resign following her testimony before Congress last week, during which she and the presidents of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania failed to say calling for the genocide of Jews violates the student code of conduct.
While Gay apologized for her response, UPenn President Liz Magill resigned over the weekend.
"I feel incredibly isolated, I feel incredibly let down, and I also feel angry," Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Harvard graduate student, said Tuesday. "If this was any other minority, if these were African American students, Asian American, gay students, there would not be this double standard. There would not be this hypocrisy. But once again, there is this Jewish exception, where Jewish students simply don't matter as much."
Kestenbaum added that several of his friends are already talking about the possibility of transferring to other graduate school programs during the winter break.
The New England chapter of the Anti-Defamation League says it continues to stand by to assist Harvard should it be asked.
"In the final analysis, it is what is enforced on Harvard's campus that protects the students who are now experiencing far too much harassment and bullying must be followed up with action that students experience," said Jonah Steinberg, the chapter's regional director.
That prompted more than 700 Harvard faculty members, more than one thousand alumni and Harvard's Alumni Association to send letters to the Harvard Corporation, calling on the university's highest governing board to not cave to political pressure, and to publicly support Gay.
U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-New York, a committee member who repeatedly asked the university presidents whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate the schools’ rules, voiced her displeasure on X, the social media platform, about the decision supporting Gay.
“There have been absolutely no updates to (Harvard’s) code of conduct to condemn the calls for genocide of Jews and protect Jewish students on campus,” she said. “The only update to Harvard’s code of conduct is to allow plagiarists as president.”
A grassroots watchdog group called StopAntisemitism said on X that Harvard's decision “serves only to greenlight more Jew-hatred on campus." It said it continues to call for Gay's resignation and urged the corporation to reconsider.
Harvard students who spoke to NBC10 Boston on Tuesday mostly agreed with the Harvard Corporation's decision to retain Gay.
“I think it’s ultimately the right decision. I think that as much as her response was messy, and maybe not the best it could have been, I think you can’t expel students for free speech,” Harvard junior Joseph Hernandez said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m thrilled with her presidency so far, but I don’t think getting rid of her is the right decision either.”
“She said things in a Congressional hearing that she apologized for and that obviously I disagree with, but I believe her when she said she had a lot of media training that she got caught up in," Harvard freshman Kai Nelson said. “I’m Jewish and I don’t feel like I’ve been facing a wave of antisemitism. I don’t think politicians of any party should determine who leads our university.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
