It’s never good karma to celebrate an individual losing their job. While I have publically taken great issue with Claudine Gay’s actions as the President of Harvard University, I still do not celebrate her resignation. At the same time, Dr. Gay’s resignation is a positive for the Harvard community—and for higher education at large.
Harvard needs a leader whose rhetoric and actions manifest an unflinching commitment to student safety and whose academic integrity is beyond reproach. At a time when higher education is under siege nationwide, Harvard’s next leader must be capable of earning the confidence of our student body, our distinguished faculty, our influential alumni community, and the broader public. Claudine Gay failed to effectively engage with all four of those groups.
The original critiques of Dr. Gay’s leadership were driven by good faith concerns over her commitment to the safety of students on Harvard’s campus. And some of the more recent criticisms of Dr. Gay regarding her academic integrity have stemmed from legitimate dismay over the various plagiarism accusations levied against her. Other criticisms of Dr. Gay’s academic integrity and her qualifications as a scholar have doubtlessly been fueled by thinly veiled—and occasionally quite explicit—racism and misogyny.
While the motives of those who initially brought forth claims of plagiarism against Dr. Gay have been extensively expounded upon in the press, such motives and the actual nuances of the plagiarism claims are quite different things. Indeed, as David Bell discerningly notes, ignoring plagiarism allegations against Dr. Gay “because of who leveled them is to follow a logic most associated today with Donald Trump: You can’t take the accusations against me seriously, because my accusers are on the side of my political enemies.”
Whether Dr. Gay fully plagiarized or merely accidentally failed to cite sources robustly is almost beside the point. Dr. Gay led one of the most elite academic institutions in the world, and her scholarship’s adherence to ethical citation principles should have been befitting of an individual who led such an institution.
Whether Dr. Gay’s responses to questions surrounding the genocide of Jews were technically legally correct is almost beside the point, too. As she has acknowledged, Dr. Gay performed poorly in her meeting before Congress. She disillusioned many Harvard students, faculty, and alumni as a result of her failure to unequivocally state that calling for the genocide of Jewish students is a transgression of Harvard’s rules. Dr. Gay’s initial response to the loathsome terrorist attacks in Israel was also underwhelming and disappointing.
This is not to say that leaders—even those occupying extraordinarily prestigious offices—cannot make mistakes. This is also not to say that Claudine Gay is a poor scholar or that she is a person of poor character. Despite her rather perfunctory response to my open letter earlier this fall, I do not doubt that Claudine Gay is a kind person who means well.
I alluded to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s assertion that “[c]haracter is higher than intellect” in my only direct communication with Claudine Gay a few months ago. In resigning as the President of Harvard at a time when the institution has been embarrassed far and wide by the actions of its leader, Dr. Gay showed “[c]haracter.” She put the institution of Harvard before herself, and we should be grateful to her for having done so.
The circumstances Dr. Gay inherited as our leader were unenviable. But she did not meet the moment. It’s time for Harvard to pick a new leader committed to building an environment of intellectual freedom, scholarly transformation, and mutual respect.
The world needs ethical and sound leadership, and Harvard ought to lead the charge in cultivating moral and daring leaders of the future.
We need a President who is not mired in controversy and whose academic record’s ethical quality is commensurate with the office of the President of Harvard University. We need change.
We also need more of the “[c]haracter” to which Emerson referred in his remarks at Harvard in 1837. We need it at Harvard; we need it in the world at large.
William Goldsmith ’24 (willgoldsmith@college.harvard.edu) writes Forum for the Independent.