CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) 鈥 Harvard President Claudine Gay will remain leader of the prestigious Ivy League school following her comments last week at a congressional hearing on antisemitism, the university's highest governing body announced Tuesday.
鈥淥ur extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing,鈥 the Harvard Corporation said in a statement following its meeting Monday.
Only months into her leadership, Gay came under intense scrutiny following the hearing in which she and two of her peers struggled to answer questions about in the wake of the , which erupted in early October. Their academic responses provoked backlash from Republican opponents, along with alumni and donors who say the university leaders are failing to stand up for Jewish students on their campuses.
Some lawmakers and donors to the university had called for Gay to step down, following as president of the University of Pennsylvania on Saturday.
On Tuesday, the University of Pennsylvania announced it had selected an interim president to replace Magill, naming Dr. J. Larry Jameson, who has served as executive vice president of the University of Pennsylvania for the Health System and dean of the Perelman School of Medicine since 2011.
A petition signed by more than 600 faculty members had to keep Gay in charge.
At issue was a line of questioning that asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate the universities鈥 code of conduct. At , Gay said it depended on the context, adding that when 鈥渟peech crosses into conduct, that violates our policies.鈥
鈥淪o 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,鈥 the corporation's statement said. 鈥淐alls for genocide are despicable and contrary to fundamental human values. President Gay has apologized for how she handled her congressional testimony and has committed to redoubling the university's fight against antisemitism."
In an interview with The Harvard Crimson student newspaper last week, Gay said she got caught up in and failed to properly denounce threats of violence against Jewish students.
鈥淲hat 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 鈥 threats to our Jewish students 鈥 have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged,鈥 Gay said.
Testimony from Gay and Magill drew intense national backlash, as did similar responses from the president of MIT, who also testified before the Republican-led House Education and Workforce Committee.
U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-New York, a committee member who repeatedly asked the university presidents whether 鈥渃alling for the genocide of Jews鈥 would violate the schools鈥 rules, voiced her displeasure about the school's decision on X, the social media platform.
鈥淭here have been absolutely no updates to (Harvard鈥檚) code of conduct to condemn the calls for genocide of Jews and protect Jewish students on campus,鈥 she said. 鈥淭he only update to Harvard鈥檚 code of conduct is to allow plagiarists as president.鈥
The school said an independent review into plagiarism allegations against Gay found three instances of 鈥渋nadequate citation,鈥 but no misconduct.
On the Harvard campus, the news about the decision came as students and teachers were rushing to classes. Gunduz Vassaf, a visiting professor in psychology, said he supports Gay.
鈥淚 fully support her testimony before Congress. I do believe that the situation has been taken out of context in the emotions of the immediate moment,鈥 Vassaf said.
鈥淎s long as there鈥檚 no incitement and a call for violence, this falls within the freedom of speech,鈥 he added.
Evan Routhier, a student at Harvard, said he also supports Gay.
鈥淢y experience since she鈥檚 taken over has been positive,鈥 he said.
The news drew others to the campus.
Rabbi Chananel Weiner, the director of Aish Campus Boston, said he came to Harvard to show solidarity with students.
鈥淲e need to resist the ideas really that are being spread here that are really against the Jewish people,鈥 he said. 鈥淭he Jewish people are under attack and we're under attack from all angles, academia being one of them and this is the heart of academia."
Celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz, a longtime defender of Israel and a professor at Harvard Law School, said Tuesday it was a mistake for the Harvard Corporation to support Gay, saying she championed a diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracy 鈥渢hat has become an incubator for antisemitism.鈥
He said he hopes that Gay changes her views on free speech to ensure everyone is treated the same.
鈥淩ight now she has been presiding over a dangerous double standard that permits free speech attacking some groups but not others. The school must decide on a policy, either free speech for all, equally, or limited restrictions, equally applied. She has not been the champion for that kind of equality and therefore she is the wrong person, at the wrong time, in the wrong job,鈥 he said.
A grassroots watchdog group called StopAntisemitism said on X that Harvard's decision 鈥渟erves only to greenlight more Jew-hatred on campus." It said it continues to call for Gay's resignation and urged the corporation to reconsider.
College campuses nationwide have been roiled by protests, antisemitism and Islamophobia since the start of the war in Gaza two months ago, putting university administrators across the nation on the defensive.
The corporation also addressed allegations of plagiarism against Gay, saying that Harvard became aware of them in late October regarding three articles she had written. It initiated an independent review at Gay's request.
The corporation reviewed the results on Saturday, 鈥渨hich revealed a few instances of inadequate citation鈥 and found no violation of Harvard's standards for research misconduct, it said. Gay is proactively requesting four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications, the statement said.
Harvard鈥檚 announcement came the same day several prominent universities faced new federal investigations for allegations of antisemitism or Islamophobia.
The U.S. Education Department announced it opened civil rights investigations at Stanford, UCLA, the University of California-San Diego, the University of Washington-Seattle, Rutgers University and Whitman College. Details about the complaints were not released. Those schools join Harvard, Penn, Cornell, Columbia and several others that have come under investigation by the department since Oct. 7.
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McCormack reported from Concord, New Hampshire. Associated Press reporter David Sharp contributed from Portland, Maine.
