Claudine Homosexual got here below hearth final month for her solutions to a query on anti-Semitism on campus.
The president of Harvard College, Claudine Homosexual, has resigned amid plagiarism accusations and criticism over a congressional listening to throughout which she was unable to say whether or not requires the genocide of Jews on campus would violate the varsity’s conduct coverage.
In an announcement asserting her departure on Tuesday, Homosexual wrote, “It is with a heavy heart but a deep love for Harvard that I write to share that I will be stepping down as president.”
“It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor … and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus,” she added.
In July 2023, Homosexual grew to become the primary Black president of Harvard in 387 years.
However final month, Homosexual, together with the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how and the College of Pennsylvania, got here below hearth for his or her lawyerly responses to a line of questioning from New York Republican consultant Elise Stefanik, who requested whether or not “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate the school’s code of conduct.
The three presidents had been known as earlier than the Republican-led Home Committee on Schooling and the Workforce to reply accusations that universities had been failing to guard Jewish college students in mild of the rise in anti-Semitism following Israel’s assault on Gaza and the rising Palestinian dying toll.
In response to the query, Homosexual stated that it relied on the context and that when “speech crosses into conduct, that violates our policies”.
However her reply met intense backlash from each Republicans and Democrats.
Greater than 70 lawmakers, together with two Democrats, known as for her resignation, whereas a number of high-profile Harvard alumni and donors known as for her departure.
However, greater than 700 Harvard college members signed a letter supporting Homosexual.
Homosexual later apologised to the Harvard Crimson for her feedback and stated that she was caught up within the heated alternate and didn’t condemn threats of violence in the direction of Jewish college students correctly.
“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,” stated Homosexual.
However the incident marred Homosexual’s early tenure at Harvard and sowed discord on campus.
Final week, Rabbi David Wolpe resigned from an anti-Semitism committee created by Homosexual. He stated on X that the “events on campus and the painfully inadequate testimony reinforced the idea that I cannot make the sort of difference I had hoped”.
Following the congressional listening to, Homosexual’s tutorial profession got here below intense scrutiny by conservative activists who unearthed a number of cases of alleged plagiarism in her 1997 doctoral dissertation.
Harvard’s governing board initially rallied behind Homosexual, saying a evaluation of her scholarly work turned up “a few instances of inadequate citation” however no proof of analysis misconduct.
Days later, the Harvard Company revealed that it discovered two further examples of “duplicative language without appropriate attribution.” The board stated Homosexual would replace her dissertation and request corrections.
The Harvard Company stated the resignation got here “with great sadness” and thanked Homosexual for her “deep and unwavering commitment to Harvard and to the pursuit of academic excellence.”