President Claudine Gay Will Remain in Office, Harvard Corporation to Issue Statement in Support

Harvard President Claudine Gay will remain in office with the support of the Harvard Corporation — the University’s highest governing body — following the conclusion of the board’s meeting on Monday, according to a source familiar with the decision.

The Corporation will announce the decision in a statement Tuesday morning, according to the source.

A University spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The resolution comes after the board left Gay’s fate stuck in limbo as the Corporation maintained its deafening silence for nearly a week, while Gay faced enormous backlash and calls to resign over her testimony in a congressional hearing about antisemitism on college campuses.

Gay’s position at the helm of Harvard grew increasingly more tenuous over the weekend as the Corporation was slow to show support for the University’s embattled president. Senior Fellow Penny S. Pritzker ’81 did not answer questions from a reporter on Sunday about whether she would ask Gay to resign from office.

The decision to allow Gay to stay on in her role as president comes following an outpouring of support for Gay from faculty and alumni after University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill resigned on Saturday.

More than 700 faculty signed a letter to the Harvard Corporation on Monday urging the body to resist calls to remove Gay from her post. The Harvard Alumni Association Executive Committee also expressed its unanimous support for Gay in a letter to the University’s governing boards Monday.

The Corporation’s decision to support Gay comes in the wake of calls for her resignation following a controversial testimony before a House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing about antisemitism on college campuses last week. More than 70 members of Congress called on Gay, Magill, and MIT President Sally A. Kornbluth to step down over their remarks during the hearing.

The executive committee of the MIT Corporation — the school’s governing board — declared their “full and unreserved support” for Kornbluth in a statement Thursday evening.

The resolution that Gay will remain in office also comes as she faces allegations of plagiarism in her academic work, charges that gained traction on social media over the weekend as Gay’s future as president seemed increasingly in peril.

“I stand by the integrity of my scholarship,” Gay wrote in a statement Monday morning. “Throughout my career, I have worked to ensure my scholarship adheres to the highest academic standards.”

—Staff writer Miles J. Herszenhorn can be reached at miles.herszenhorn@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @mherszenhorn or on Threads @mileshersz.

—Staff writer Claire Yuan can be reached at claire.yuan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @claireyuan33.