Harvard University president Claudine Gay resigned on Tuesday amid plagiarism accusations and criticism over testimony at a congressional hearing where she was unable to say unequivocally that calls on campus for the genocide of Jews would violate the university’s conduct policy.

Ms Gay is the second Ivy League president to resign in the past month following the congressional testimony. Liz Magill, president of the University of Pennyslvania, resigned on December 9.

Ms Gay, Harvard’s first black president, announced her departure just months into her tenure in a letter to the Harvard community.

In her letter Ms Gay said it has been “distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigour — two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am — and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fuelled by racial animus”.

But Ms Gay, who is returning to the school’s faculty, added that “it has become clear that it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge”.

Harvard President
Claudine Gay addresses an audience in May 2023 at Harvard University (Steven Senne/PA)

Following the congressional hearing, Ms Gay’s academic career came under intense scrutiny by conservative activists who unearthed several instances of alleged plagiarism in her 1997 doctoral dissertation.

Harvard’s governing board initially rallied behind Ms Gay, saying a review of her scholarly work turned up “a few instances of inadequate citation” but no evidence of research misconduct.

Days later, the Harvard Corporation revealed that it found two additional examples of “duplicative language without appropriate attribution”. The board said Ms Gay would update her dissertation and request corrections.

The Harvard Corporation said the resignation came “with great sadness” and thanked Ms Gay for her “deep and unwavering commitment to Harvard and to the pursuit of academic excellence”.

Alan M Garber, provost and chief academic officer, will serve as interim president until Harvard finds a replacement, the board said in a statement.

Ms Gay and the presidents of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) came under fire last month for their answers to a line of questioning from New York Representative Elise Stefanik, who asked whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate the colleges’ code of conduct.

The three presidents had been called before the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce to answer accusations that universities were failing to protect Jewish students amid rising fears of antisemitism worldwide and fallout from Israel’s intensifying war in Gaza, which faces heightened criticism for the mounting Palestinian death toll.

Ms Gay said it depended on the context, adding that when “speech crosses into conduct, that violates our policies”.

The answer faced swift backlash from Republican and some Democratic politicians as well as the White House. The hearing was parodied in the opening skit on Saturday Night Live.

Ms Gay later apologised, telling The Crimson student newspaper that she got caught up in a heated exchange at the House committee hearing and failed to properly denounce threats of violence against Jewish students.

“What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged,” Ms Gay said.

The episode marred Ms Gay’s early tenure at Harvard — she became president in July — and sowed discord at the Ivy League campus.

On Thursday, Rabbi David Wolpe resigned from a new committee on antisemitism created by Ms Gay, saying in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that “events on campus and the painfully inadequate testimony reinforced the idea that I cannot make the sort of difference I had hoped”.

The House committee announced on Thursday it will investigate the policies and disciplinary procedures at Harvard, MIT and Penn.

Separate federal civil rights investigations were previously opened at Harvard, Penn and several other universities in response to complaints submitted to the US Education Department.

Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz, in a statement on X, also weighed in on Gay’s resignation.

“A little context. A failure in leadership and denial of antisemitism have a price. I hope that the esteemed Harvard University will learn from this dismal conduct,” he wrote.

The Rev Al Sharpton in a statement called pressure for Ms Gay to resign “an attack on every black woman in this country who’s put a crack in the glass ceiling” and an “assault on the health, strength, and future of diversity, equity, and inclusion”.