The board of Harvard unanimously voted to retain the university’s president Claudine Gay despite her public refusal to say that calls for genocide of Jewish students would contradict Harvard’s code of conduct — and subsequent allegations of past plagiarism.
“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 announced in a statement on Tuesday.
Gay kept her position despite both credible allegations of plagiarism and an abysmal performance alongside other university presidents before the House Education and the Workforce Committee. On Capitol Hill last week, Gay along with the presidents of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania refused to testify that calls for Jewish genocide violate student codes of conduct — despite their schools’ histories of punishing students for conservative speech.
“We embrace a commitment to free expression even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful,” Gay said. “It’s when that speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies against bullying, harassment, intimidation.”
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Gay’s peers offered lawmakers similar answers when it came to confronting students who called for the genocide of Jews at their respective schools. University of Pennsylvania President M. Elizabeth Magill resigned from her role on Saturday after donors responded to her disastrous testimony by pulling contributions. Ross Stevens, a hedge fund manager who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business
