Claudine Gay (born August 4, 1970)[2] is an American political scientist who is the Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African-American Studies atHarvard University. Her research focuses on American political behavior, including voter turnout and politics of race and identity.[3]
In December 2023, Gay and two other university presidents faced pressure from the public[4][5] and from acongressional committee to resign, over responses to instances ofantisemitic violence on the campus.[6][7][8][9] Amid this pressure campaign Gay was accused ofplagiarism in academic publications,[10][11][12] although the allegations have been sharply contested.[13][14] In January 2024, she resigned from the presidency.[15]
After graduating, Gay was an assistant professor, and later tenured associate professor, in Stanford's Department of Political Science from 2000 to 2006. In the 2003–2004 academic year, she was a fellow at theCenter for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.[19]
Gay's research addresses American political behavior, including voter turnout, housing policy, and the politics of race and identity.[3] She was recruited by Harvard to be a professor of government in 2006, and was appointed professor of African-American studies in 2007.[26]
In 2015, Gay was named the dean of social sciences at theHarvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and the Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African-American Studies. In 2018, she was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.[3]
As Dean of FAS, which oversees graduate and undergraduate studies, Gay outlined four primary concerns: increasing diversity among faculty, supporting students interested ininterdisciplinary studies, encouraging interdepartmental collaboration among professors, and fostering faculty involvement in the university's community.[27]
Gay's priorities during her tenure as dean includedanti-racism initiatives and increasing racial diversity on campus among students and faculty.[28][29] In August 2020, FAS hired its first associate dean ofdiversity, inclusion, and belonging.[30] Following the June 2023Supreme Court decision inStudents for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which held that race-basedaffirmative action programs in college admissions were unconstitutional, Gay said that Harvard would "comply with the court's decision, but it does not change our values."[31]
In 2019, Gay said that Harvard would seek to hire multipleethnic studies professors,[44] hiring three in 2022.[45] After protests condemning Harvard's denial of tenure toLorgia García Peña, a scholar of ethnic studies, Gay said in January 2020 that she would initiate a review of the FAS tenure process.[46] The review, released in October 2021, stated that Harvard's tenure process was largely "structurally sound", but also found "a lack of trust in, and a low morale, about the tenure process" among faculty.[47]
Harvard faced educational and financial disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For fiscal year 2020, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences reported losses of $15.8 million.[48] In early 2021, Gay announced that the cost of the FAS's core academic commitments were greater than its revenues and began processes to reduce expenses.[49] At the end of that year, the FAS reported a surplus of $51 million, an increase from the projected deficit of $112 million.[50]
In addition to her positions at Harvard, Gay served as a vice president of theMidwest Political Science Association from 2014 to 2017[51] and as a trustee of Phillips Exeter from 2017 to 2023.[22]
In June 2022,Harvard University presidentLawrence Bacow announced that he would resign from the post in one year. A search committee led byPenny Pritzker considered 600 nominees and selected Gay to succeed Bacow. On December 15, 2022, Harvard announced that Gay had been selected as the 30thpresident of Harvard University.[52][53] She took office on July 1, 2023, becoming the university's first Black president.[54][55]
After the October 7, 2023Hamas-led attack on Israel, Gay faced criticism, including from former Harvard presidentLawrence Summers,[4][5] for failing to adequately condemn the attacks. In a December 2023Congressional committee hearing, Gay and the presidents ofMIT and theUniversity of Pennsylvania were asked about institutional response toantisemitism on their campuses.[56] When asked, by Elise Stefanik, if a hypothetical call for thegenocide ofJewish people would qualify as a violation of Harvard's code of conduct, Gay responded: "It can be, depending on the context." She later clarified: "Antisemitic rhetoric, when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation — that is actionable conduct and we do take action."[57]
Gay's remarks were broadly criticized in the media.[58] In response, Gay apologized[59][60] and said that some people "have confused a right to free expression with the idea that Harvard will condone calls for violence against Jewish students".[61][62] A letter signed by 70 congressional representatives called for all three presidents to resign.[63]Liz Magill had already been under pressure within the University of Pennsylvania, and resigned from the presidency the following week.[64]
On December 11, more than 700 of Harvard's 2,452 faculty members signed a letter opposing calls for Gay to be removed as university president.[65] The executive committee of Harvard's Alumni Association stated it "unanimously and unequivocally" supported Gay's leadership, praising her "for protecting academic freedom and the right of all students to voice their opinions".[66] On December 12, the board of the Harvard Corporation said they "unanimously" supported Gay's leadership, adding: "President Gay has apologized for how she handled her congressional testimony and has committed to redoubling the University's fight against antisemitism."[67]
Soon after the December congressional hearing, Gay was accused of plagiarism by conservative activistChristopher Rufo and journalistAaron Sibarium,[10][68] and by an anonymous complaint.[11] As summarized byThe New York Times, the allegations concerned "using material from other sources without proper attribution... [ranging] from brief snippets of technical definitions to paragraphs summing up other scholars' research that are only lightly paraphrased, and in some cases lack any direct citation of the other scholars."[11] The allegations totaled almost 50 instances spanning eight of Gay's academic works, including her dissertation and five of her 11 published articles.[69]
Carol M. Swain accused Gay of a failure to credit Swain's work from her 1993 book,Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress, as well as Swain's article "Women and Blacks in Congress: 1870–1996" that was published in 1997.[70]
Harvard had been contacted by theNew York Post in October 2023 for comment on a planned story about 27 "possible examples of plagiarism", and called the Post's allegations "demonstrably false", threatening to sue the newspaper for libel.[71]
In response, Gay said she stood behind the integrity of her work and requested an outside review of it.[72][71] The Harvard Corporation reported that the review found "a few instances of inadequate citation" and "duplicative language without appropriate attribution" in her work, but "no violation of Harvard's standards for research misconduct."[11][72][13] Analyses byThe Harvard Crimson andCNN contested Harvard's statement, finding that Gay had likely violated the university's policies on plagiarism and academic integrity.[73][74][75] Gay requested seven corrections to add citations and quotation marks to her dissertation and two of her articles.[67][76][69] AcademicJoseph Reagle opined that media reports that Gay "plagiarized" implied that she had stolen the central ideas in her work, saying "I don't think this is the case" but that the work "contain plagiarized prose. This is a lesser but still significant infraction."[77] Academic William Arighi, writing for theJournal of Academic Freedom, later characterized the events as "an attempt not at promoting truth but at grinding a political ax".[14]
In response to the allegations, thecongressional committee that held the hearing on antisemitism said it would examine Gay's work, and asked the university to produce related communications and documentation.[12][78]
On January 2, 2024, Gay announced she was resigning her position.[79] In an email to affiliates, Gay wrote, "it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor – two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am—and frightening[80] to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled byracial animus."[81] In an op-ed the following day, Gay wrote that she "made mistakes", but her invitation to testify before Congress about antisemitism was a "well-laid trap", and the campaign to oust her was "[a] skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society".[82][83][84]
Following Gay's resignation,Alan Garber, the provost of Harvard, was named interim president. Gay remained on the faculty at Harvard.[85][86]
2002: "Spirals of Trust? The Effect of Descriptive Representation on the Relationship Between Citizens and Their Government",American Journal of Political Science
2004: "Putting Race in Context: Identifying the Environmental Determinants of Black Racial Attitudes",American Political Science Review
2006: "Seeing Difference: The Effect of Economic Disparity on Black Attitudes Toward Latinos",American Journal of Political Science
2007: "Legislating Without Constraints: The Effect of Minority Districting on Legislators' Responsiveness to Constituency Preferences",The Journal of Politics
2012: "Moving to Opportunity: The Political Effects of a Housing Mobility Experiment",Urban Affairs Review
^Harper, Tyler Austin (January 3, 2024)."The Real Harvard Scandal".The Atlantic.Archived from the original on January 3, 2024. RetrievedJanuary 4, 2024.
Hamid, Orakwue & Schisgall 2023, : "The Crimson independently reviewed the published allegations. Though some are minor — consisting of passages that are similar or identical to Gay’s sources, lacking quotation marks but including citations — others are more substantial, including some paragraphs and sentences nearly identical to other work and lacking citations. Some appear to violate Harvard's current policies around plagiarism and academic integrity."
Steck 2023, : "Harvard President Claudine Gay recently requested corrections for two of her academic papers, but she did not address even clearer examples of plagiarism from earlier in her academic history at the school, according to a CNN analysis of her writings... Both offenses appear to go against Harvard’s guide on plagiarism, which clearly states, 'it is considered plagiarism to draw any idea or any language from someone else without adequately crediting that source in your paper.'"
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