CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AFP) — Harvard University's president, under fire over testimony she gave about antisemitism on campus, will remain in her job after a meeting of the institution's governing body issued a statement backing her on Tuesday.
Claudine Gay has been engulfed by criticism after she declined to say unequivocally whether calling for genocide of Jews violated Harvard's code of conduct as she testified before Congress alongside the heads of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania.
"It depends on the context," she told lawmakers in one tense exchange.
The Harvard Corporation, one of the university's two governing boards, said in a statement, "We today reaffirm our support for President Gay's continued leadership of Harvard University."
But the body did criticize the university's initial response to the Hamas Oct. 7 attacks that Israel said killed 1,200 people inside Israel and saw around 240 people taken hostage.
Israel's offensive has reduced much of Gaza to rubble and killed at least 18,200 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
President Gay’s ‘failures’
In the United States, the controversy has come amid a rise in attacks and violent rhetoric targeting Jews and Muslims, including at universities, since the Israel-Hamas war erupted.
"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," the corporation said. "Calls for genocide are despicable and contrary to fundamental human values."
"President Gay has apologized for how she handled her congressional testimony," the corporation added in a statement.
Rabbi Getzel Davis, a Harvard campus chaplain and member of the Hillel Jewish student movement, said in response to the corporation's announcement that "the most important thing for Jewish students at Harvard and Harvard Hillel is that the culture changes."
"We look forward to continuing to work with President Gay and other senior Harvard administrators on educational programs and enforcing policies to protect Jewish students," he said.
Penn University President Liz Magill resigned in the wake of her responses to Congress, and pressure had mounted on Gay both inside and outside of Harvard to follow suit.
More than 70 lawmakers, including two Democrats, called for her resignation, while a number of high-profile Harvard alumni and donors have called for her departure.
In excess of 700 Harvard faculty members signed a letter supporting Gay.
Gay, 53, was born in New York to Haitian immigrants and is a professor of political science who in July became the first Black president of 368-year-old Harvard University, in Cambridge, outside Boston.
Ryan Enos, professor of government at Harvard, said ahead of the corporation's endorsement of Gay that "the reason that she has been pressured to resign is because of political pressure from politicians trying to shape universities in their image."
"One of the bedrocks of a free society, one of the most important things for a free society, is that universities are not run by the state," Enos said.
Former student and multimillion-dollar donor Bill Ackman claimed in a letter to Harvard's governing boards that "President Gay's failures have led to billions of dollars of cancelled, paused and withdrawn donations to the university."
Some donors have responded to Harvard's handling of protests over the Israel-Hamas war by making protest donations of just $1, financial newswire Bloomberg reported.
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by Nicolas REVISE Agence France-Presse
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