Damn, that was quick. After Harvard University hired their first Black president, Claudine Gay, she didn’t spend more than a few months in the position before handing in her resignation letter.
Gay hasn’t caught a break since taking the position in July. One critic, billionaire Bill Ackman, accused her of being a “diversity hire” and a City Journal reporter accused her of plagiarizing her academic work. Other Harvard students took to social media to scold Gay for not providing a prompt response to the Israel-Gaza conflict especially during the rising tensions on the university campus.
Many who supported her through the insane criticism took her departure as a racist chase out of the school.
Check out Black Twitter’s response to her unexpected departure:
“Well, they got what they wanted from their well-executed plan,” wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones - who previously called out critics for their racist attacks on Gay’s hiring.
“If we’re going to start scrutinizing every detail of college presidents’ past writings for technical attribution issues, then let’s do it. Let’s go look at everyone’s past writings, not just Claudine Gay at Harvard. Let’s put them all under a microscope and see how they hold up,” said Keith Boykin, co-founder of the National Black Justice Coalition.
“Attacks against Claudine Gay have been unrelenting & the biases unmasked. Her resignation on the heels of Liz Magill’s set dangerous precedent in the academy for political witch hunts. The project isn’t to thwart hate but to foment it [through] vicious takedowns. This protects no one,” wrote Janai Nelson, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
According to Gay’s resignation letter, she also takes the sudden resignation to be the result of what she called “personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.” The backlash was so obviously bigoted even the Fellows of Harvard College issued a letter in response to her resignation saying most of it took the form of “repugnant and in some cases racist vitriol.”
Gay said in her letter she’ll be returning to faculty and promises to continue working alongside the students to build a better community.