Harvard president Claudine Gay resigns in disgrace, paints herself as a victim of 'racial animus'

Claudine Gay threw in the towel Tuesday, resigning as president of Harvard University after getting hit with six new plagiarism complaints.

Gay said in a possibly original letter to the school community, "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. This is not a decision I came to easily."

"After consultation with members of the Corporation, 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 with a focus on the institution rather than any individual," continued Gay.

Gay painted herself as a victim, suggesting she found it frightening "to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus."

The outgoing president indicated she would be returning to the faculty "and to the scholarship and teaching that are the lifeblood of what we do."

Gay became the 30th president of Harvard University on July 1 after evidently playing up her leftist bona fides as Edgerley Dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, where she brought new emphasis to climate alarmism and identity politics.

Ahead of her inauguration, Gay stated, "Today, we are in a moment of remarkable and accelerating change — socially, politically, economically, and technologically."

It appears that Gay was unable to keep up with the accelerated change.

Gay's presidency, the shortest-lived in Harvard's history, was dogged in recent months by multiple allegations of plagiarism and concerns over her response to growing anti-Semitism on campus.

The Washington Free Beacon obtained a complaint filed Monday with the university, bringing the plagiarism allegations against Gay to nearly 50, implicating seven of her 17 published works, including her 1997 doctoral thesis.

The latest complaint alleges that in a 2001 article, Gay plagiarized nearly a page of material straight from University of Wisconsin political science professor David Canon's 1999 book "Race, Redistricting, and Representation: The Unintended Consequences of Black Majority Districts" without quotations or so much as a citation.

The university recently launched an investigation into the allegations against Gay.

A unnamed undergraduate member of Harvard's Honor Council recently penned an op-ed for the Harvard Crimson calling on Gay "to resign for her numerous and serious violations of academic ethics."

"When my peers are found responsible for multiple instances of inadequate citation, they are often suspended for an academic year," wrote the student. "When the president of their university is found responsible for the same types of infractions, the fellows of the Corporation ‘unanimously stand in support of’ her."

Extra to allegedly trafficking in ideas and words not her own, Gay oversaw segregated graduation ceremonies and has drawn the ire of critics for lording over an apparent increase in anti-Semitic behavior on campus, costing the Ivy League institution over an estimated $1 billion in donations.

During a congressional hearing early last month, she suggested that calls for the genocide of Jews could be protected under the university's policies on bullying and harassment "depending on the context."

The Harvard Crimson indicated that university spokesman Jonathan L. Swain declined to comment on Gay's resignation.

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