Controversial academic and author Ibram X. Kendi has claimed that Claudine Gay was only forced to resign as president of Harvard because she is black.
Gay, 53, announced her decision on Tuesday after months of criticism and questions over her academic record.
Gay was initially in the spotlight due to her slow response to students on campus justifying the Hamas terror attacks of October 7, and poured fuel on the fire when, during a Congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus, she equivocated when asked if calling for the genocide of Jews was hate speech.
She then found her academic record being scrutinized, and investigative journalists dug up 50 examples of plagiarism in her work – with some whole paragraphs seemingly lifted almost verbatim.
Gay is the second Ivy League president to resign in the past month following the December 5 congressional testimony: Liz Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, resigned on December 9.
But Kendi, author of the best-selling 2019 book ‘How to be an Antiracist’, said her departure was due to racism.
Ibram X. Kendi, author of the best-selling 2019 book ‘How to be an Antiracist’ and head of Boston University’s Center for Antiracism Research, on Tuesday said Gay was pushed out of Harvard by racists
Claudine Gay, the first black president of Harvard, was forced to resign on Tuesday amid a growing plagiarism scandal and questions over her handling of antisemitism on campus
‘Racist mobs won’t stop until they topple all Black people from positions of power and influence who are not reinforcing the structure of racism,’ he said.
‘What these racist mobs are doing should be obvious to any reporter who cares about truth or justice as opposed to conflicts and clicks.
‘When a racist mob attacks a Black person, it finds a seemingly legitimate reason for the attack that allows for it to accrue popular support and credibility, and which allows the growing mob to deny they are attacking the person in this way because the person is Black.
‘That’s how anti-Black racist attacks have been justified. The seemingly legitimate reason, in this latest case at Harvard, is primarily academic misconduct or plagiarism. The question to assess whether this was a racist attack isn’t whether Dr. Gay engaged in any misconduct.
‘The question is whether all these people would have investigated, surveilled, harassed, written about, and attacked her in the same way if the Harvard president in this case would have been White.
‘I. Think. Not.’
Gay is seen testifying before Congress on December 5 about antisemitism on campuses
Gay, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, became the first black person to lead Harvard when she took over as president on July 1.
She studied economics at Stanford, where she became a tenured professor, having completed her Ph.D. in government at Harvard. She returned to Harvard after a stint at Stanford, and was a professor of government and of African and African American studies. She became dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 2018, and was a known supporter of hiring more diverse people to the university.
On December 10, as she was dealing with criticism of her Congressional testimony, conservative activist Christopher Rufo published on his newsletter accusations that she had plagiarized portions of her 1997 doctoral thesis.
The Washington Free Beacon then published their own investigation into Gay’s work, but on December 12 Harvard Corporation – which runs the university – announced she had been investigated and cleared.
Some noted the speed of the investigation: most take six to 12 months, but Gay was cleared in a matter of weeks.
The Corporation said some of her academic work would be ‘corrected’, but her job was secure.
Yet the accusations of plagiarism kept coming, and students began to complain that they would be punished for similar violations.
Most of the people she plagiarized said they were unconcerned, saying that there was a limit to how many ways you could phrase certain political science terminology. But others she copied, and some within the university, said they were concerned.
On Tuesday, Gay resigned – and said racism played a part.
Gay, seen in May 2023, shortly before taking up the role as the first black president of Harvard
Gay’s alleged plagiarism of Gary King’s work seen here in bold font
Gay was accused of copying two paragraphs from work by then-Harvard scholars D. Stephen Voss and Bradley Palmquist. One paragraph is nearly identical except for a few words
Gay’s alleged plagiarism of David Canon’s work seen here in bold font
She said, in a letter announcing her resignation, that 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 to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.’
She added: ‘It has become clear that it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge.’
Kendi agreed that Gay was forced out by racism.
‘It isn’t hard to figure out why the racist mob is cheering right now and saying ‘go woke go broke’ and President Gay wasn’t qualified and the ‘tide is turning against woke and DEI’ and ‘this is the beginning of the end of woke’,’ he said.
Kendi has faced his own problems with the DEI movement.
Last year, the institute he founded at Boston University – the Center for Antiracist Research – shed half its staff and faced an inquiry into whether its $50 million budget had been mismanaged.
Whistleblowers within the center said they were concerned at the way the institute ran, and felt the management was lacking. There were also questions about what the institute had actually produced for the investment.
Kendi was cleared in November, and said that he was subjected to investigation because of a stereotype that black people can’t manage money. He said he was excited to get back to work.
Rufo, however, said he’s ‘glad she’s gone.’
‘Rather than take responsibility for minimizing antisemitism, committing serial plagiarism, intimidating the free press, and damaging the institution, she calls her critics racist,’ Rufo said on X.
‘This is the poison’ of diversity, equity and inclusion ideology, he said.