On January 2, 2024, Claudine Gay became the shortest-serving president of Harvard University. What could have been a presidential tenure of transformative actions befitting of the hopeful promises of Harvard’s first Black woman president has instead ended in frustration and controversy. I watched and experienced her tumultuous six-month tenure as a Black woman alumna. As we begin to decide how we want to remember her presidency, one glaringly obvious truth persists: Harvard will always protect white supremacy. In suppressing pro-Palestine students, President Gay was doing the job of a Harvard president and carrying out the University’s commitment to white supremacy. But ultimately, when she failed to do this well enough, she became a victim of the same racism she had tried to uphold. The interdependency of anti-Black racism and Zionism cannot be more clear than through President Gay’s tenure and resignation.
As a Black woman who has ascended through the ranks of some of academia’s most lauded institutions, President Gay is not a stranger to racist, misogynistic abuse from critics and colleagues. She would have become used to demonstrating the extent of her qualifications, aptitude, and credibility far beyond what was expected of her white counterparts. In a world that works tirelessly to undermine Black women, it is no surprise that the first one appointed to lead an institution built on and funded by white supremacy would be the victim of racist attacks.
The accusations of plagiarism levied against President Gay cannot be separated from her identity as a Black woman. They did not come from scholars with an earnest commitment to academic integrity but from political opponents intent on scrutinizing her entire career and leadership. Bill Ackman saw her appointment as a prime opportunity to accelerate his right-wing vision for Harvard. His attacks against her made obvious use of anti-Blackness and were folded into a broader anti-DEI campaign that highlights his commitment to preserving Harvard’s whiteness. Ackman’s thinly-masked racist attacks have attempted to undermine Gay as a person and qualified professional. Labeling her a diversity hire implies she lacks the skills and experience to serve as a university president; amplifying initial allegations of plagiarism provides him “evidence” to support his racist claim.
While plagiarism should be treated seriously and dealt with fairly, the rhetoric around the allegations and investigation against President Gay’s reduce her to a villian and make clear that they are the final stage of a sustained and calculated campaign. Finding a seemingly legitimate reason to attack a Black woman is a grossly familiar tactic used to discredit our voices and expertise and preserve white supremacy.
As a Black woman, I am furious for her — for the way she was made a victim of racist vitriol and bullying.
But as a supporter of Palestinian liberation, I am furious at her.
President Gay repeatedly failed to listen to and protect Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students on campus. Her administration failed to unequivocally condemn the targeted harassment and doxxing of students, many of whom are Palestinian, Black, Arab, South Asian, Muslim, undocumented, and/or international. The task force established to address the doxxing operated with limited personnel, resources, and mandate; when harassment persisted, President Gay claimed that the university had “done enough” and she was “satisfied” with their response. After severe intimidation, death threats, and hateful encounters on campus, the Palestine Solidarity Committee demanded “a committee to investigate anti-Palestinian racism and suppression of pro-Palestine voices.” This demand — and the repeated requests for Palestinians and the committee to meet with the President — were met with no response. But just a day afterward, President Gay attended a Shabbat dinner at Harvard Hillel and announced the Antisemitism Advisory Group, providing institutional support, resources, personnel, and legitimacy to address antisemitism on Harvard’s campus.
President Gay failed to acknowledge that the safety of Jewish students is inextricably linked to the safety of Palestinian and other students. In repeatedly ignoring Palestinian and anti-Zionist Jewish voices, she made it clear that Harvard was unwilling to commit to ending all forms of racism — and that she would play an active role in upholding the university’s commitment to white supremacy. Furthermore, in failing to respond to meeting requests from anti-Zionist Jewish students, President Gay made it clear that she was not committed to protecting all Jewish students; her commitment was to protect Zionists.
But Zionists demanded that she do more. It was not enough that she failed to respond to and protect pro-Palestinian students; she also needed to make actively suppressing pro-Palestinian voices a defining mark of her tenure. President Gay condemned the slogan “from the river to the sea” and oversaw the initiation of disciplinary action against student activists. For me, the most painful evidence of this has been the eviction of former first-year proctor Elom Tettey-Tamaklo after he peacefully confronted and de-escalated an attempt to compromise the safety of protesters at a die-in at the Harvard Business School.
How can we reflect on the selection of Harvard’s first Black president as a victory if such an appointment did not result in a safer and more just campus for Black students and staff? Why should we celebrate representation when our community members who come to hold such platforms of authority–that have historically been denied to us–fail to use them to uplift the voices of other marginalized people?
Since October 7, most campus activists and alumni who support them have not called for her resignation. Rather, students and alumni implored President Gay to defend pro-Palestinian voices on campus and stand in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and around the world. Personally, I hoped that she might see herself and her son in the mothers of Gaza, just as she saw herself in the mothers of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, and act with empathy and a commitment to justice. I was ready to celebrate President Gay if she placed herself on the right side of history and took the first steps towards ending Harvard’s complicity in maintaining Israeli apartheid.
Let me be clear: President Gay was forced out not because she is antisemitic and/or anti-Zionist but because she is not Zionist enough. The Congressional hearing on December 5 was little more than political theater in which right-wing leaders created and seized an opportunity to undermine core tenets of liberal arts institutions and divert attention from the genocide in Gaza. The hearing was never going to be a meaningful intervention to address the real and harmful threat of antisemitism or a forum for President Gay to redeem herself in the eyes of right-wing provocateurs. Rather, she was accused of providing unsatisfying answers to questions about a course on settler colonialism in Palestine and made to state her belief in Israel’s right to exist. Furthermore, the country watched as President Gay — the lone Black woman on the panel — was interrupted and belittled more than the others in a routine display of misogynoir.
In reading her resignation letter, it horrifies me that she has faced racist threats to her safety. But it does not surprise me. It should not surprise any of us that the same people who refuse to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and who support the genocide of Palestinians are the same people who would threaten the safety of a Black woman. All of these actions are motivated by racism. Zionism, just like anti-Black racism, is a product of white supremacy. They motivate and reinforce each other.
Many Palestinian, Black, Arab, South Asian, Muslim, and otherwise marginalized students and alumni deeply wanted President Gay to be different. I would have hoped that she–as a Black woman descended from anti-imperial revolutionaries who has built her career on scholarship about minority politics and Black American political behavior–might challenge Harvard’s commitments to white supremacy. I hoped that she would take historic steps towards aligning the office of the President with social justice movements deeply similar to and intertwined with her personal history and professional interests. But I knew that no matter her personal convictions, she would center the interests of donors just as the office of the president requires. And I knew that no matter her actions, she would receive racist and sexist hate every step of the way.
I had hopes of a transformative tenure that would match and meaningfully surpass the significance of her appointment as the first Black woman president of Harvard. But rather than ally with those ready to ally with her and call out instances of misogynoir against her, President Gay chose to ally herself with traditional axes of power: with Zionists and racists who would pave the way for her resignation.
Harvard will continue to be an institution that protects and relies on white supremacy. President Gay attempted to appease its most powerful professors, donors, and alumni by participating in white supremacy herself — silencing pro-Palestinian voices and failing to protect marginalized students. She was rewarded with the gifts white supremacy bestows on Black women who do not conform well enough: undermining her expertise, villainizing her character, threatening her safety, and eventually discarding her wholesale.
Her presidency makes clear that there will always be limits to representation at institutions deeply embedded in white supremacy. These appointments do not suddenly make us acceptable to racists, nor can these institutions offer us protection from themselves.
The liberation of Black women is impossible without the liberation of Palestine. Black women deserve far better than to be victims of witch hunts and puppets of white supremacist projects, and the Palestinian people deserve unwavering, unequivocal, and explicit solidarity from every marginalized person who is given a powerful platform. We should mourn President Gay’s tenure because she was both a victim and an agent of white supremacy. We should be disappointed because we wanted both better for her and from her.
Despite being fully pro-Palestinian and firmly anti-racist, I am happy to see all three of the university presidents resign or be fired, and I don’t believe putting it in a context of racism is appropriate.
You’ve focused on just Claudine Gay. Two of the three university presidents were white.
I don’t doubt for a minute that Claudine Gay experienced racism and misogyny and am fully on board with your history of her tenure and struggles.
Where she failed, and no institution should tolerate such a level of failure, was to not assert the obvious—that every US campus has some policy or other where staff or students can’t call for genocides. Every code of conduct from Arizona to Alaska would prohibit that. Her not challenging this obvious lie has left the entire planet thinking that Harvard does allow fascist behavior on campus.
Her second fail was letting a Zionist attack chihuahua as amateurish as Elise Stefanik gaslight the entire planet with campus historical revisionism. No students had called for genocide. ‘Intifada’ doesn’t mean genocide. ‘From the River to the Sea…’ doesn’t mean genocide. Basic, basic, basic stuff. Her not challenging those obvious falsehoods has left the entire planet believing that Harvard does allow that behavior and that it did happen—when it did not.
She and the other three should have been fired without hesitation because a simple fail of competency in their number one role—to defend the university. Instead, almost single-handedly with her passivity in the face of baseless accusations, she has communicated that Harvard is a place hostile to Jews, she has communicated that the vicious lies and Zionist propaganda that have deluged and delegitimized honest protests against Israel were indeed true—she has helped set the Palestinian solidarity movement back a decade.
Yes, she should go. As should the remaining, third president. The UPenn president was smart enough to resign early and avoid being a poster child for incompetence in the defence of their institution, incompetence in the defence of academic freedom, and incompetence in the defense of reality itself.
Claudine Gay helped the gaslighters of a genocide win and now we are all crazier as a result.
Racism and sexism.
I remember reading, years ago, in a Radcliffe alumnae magazine, about a meeting of the top administration of Harvard and Radcliffe. To a suggestion that there should be more female professors (when I was an undergraduate, there were NO tenured female profs), the president of Harvard (I have mercifully forgotten his name) said that would lower the school’s academic standards. The president of Radcliffe, Matina Horner, was struck dumb with shock.
What most perplexed me in all this:
The framing remained in tact: “did she or did she not satisfactorily condemn the calls for genocide”
She should have pointed out that conflating “from the river to the sea” with “calls for genocide” is ridiculous, infuriating, viscious. it’s zionist propaganda. it is cynical manipulation. In my opinion it would have been so easy to point this out. I really don’t understand why it didn’t happen.
Thank you for this perceptive article. I believe Zionism and Israel are secondary to the anti-Black, anti-DEI agenda of Rufo and Ackman. But the common cause Zionists have made with anti-Black racism is going to backfire badly for them, as people make the connection, and Black and anti-racist solidarity with Palestine are further energized.
I figured — correctly — that racism and sexism had something to do with it.
Jewish students — Zionist Jewish students — must never feel uncomfortable. Critics of Israel can be persecuted ad libitum.
BTW I’m an alum. I don’t donate to Harvard. The Radcliffe Institute, yes. Harvard, no.