After Harvard President Claudine Gay testified before Congress on antisemitism, she faced criticism. In response, former President Barack Obama defended Gay.
Obama, a Harvard graduate, had discreetly lobbied on Gay’s behalf after her congressional appearance regarding antisemitism and threats against Jewish students on the Ivy League campus, according to a confidential source familiar with the situation who spoke with Jewish Insider on Tuesday.
“It sounded like people were being asked to close ranks to keep the broader administration stable—including its composition,” the source said of Obama’s involvement.
In early December, Gay sat before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, where she was asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews on campus violates the university’s codes of conduct related to bullying and harassment.
Her assertion that the incident would only call for a response from the school depending on the “context” sparked outrage on social media and even prompted a statement from the White House.
Gay issued an apology after the hearing and the fellows of the Harvard Corporation, the university’s highest government body, released a Dec. 12 statement backing the Harvard president despite widespread calls for her resignation. The board also addressed allegations of plagiarism regarding Gay’s academic writing first flagged in October.
On Tuesday, Harvard’s research integrity officer, Stacey Springs, reportedly received a complaint detailing more than 40 allegations of plagiarism — ranging from missing quotation marks around a few phrases or sentences to entire paragraphs lifted verbatim — regarding Gay’s academic works, according to a document obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The Harvard Corporation also released a summary of a review Wednesday evening, saying Gay will request three corrections from Harvard’s Office of the Provost regarding her 1997 Ph.D. dissertation, The Harvard Crimson reported.
Harvard reported that after conducting more review, it discovered two more instances of “duplicative language without appropriate attribution.”
