Former Harvard president defends herself after resigning

The New York Times on Wednesday published an op-ed by former Harvard President Claudine Gay, responding to the backlash that led to her resignation earlier this week. She called the backlash a “skirmish” within a “broader war” to “undermine public faith in pillars of American society.” She wrote in a letter published Tuesday that she’d resigned after discussions with the Harvard Corporation, the university’s advisory board.

What led to Gay’s resignation? Several university presidents faced criticism after testifying to a Republican-led congressional committee about anti-Semitism on college campuses. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., had asked whether calls for the genocide of Jewish people would violate Harvard’s rules regarding bullying and harassment. Gay said if the context in which the language was used amounted to bullying and harassment, then the administration would address it. When pressured to say that such speech would inherently qualify as bullying and harassment, Gay refused to do so. She also faced allegations of repetitive plagiarism. She denied the allegations as untrue and ad hominem attacks.

Dig deeper: Read Andrew T. Walker’s column in WORLD Opinions about how the reaction to Claudine Gay’s resignation signals a possible crest in the wave of “wokeism.”