Former Harvard President Claudine Gay admitted “I made mistakes” in an opinion piece published by the New York Times on January 3.
Specifying her mistakes, Gay said that she should have released a stronger statement in response to Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack on Israel. “I should have stated more forcefully what all people of good conscience know: Hamas is a terrorist organization that seeks to eradicate the Jewish state,” she wrote.
Addressing the statement she gave at a congressional hearing last month, Gay described how she “fell into a well-laid trap” by failing to clearly state that “calls for the genocide of Jewish people are abhorrent and unacceptable and that I would use every tool at my disposal to protect students from that kind of hate.”
Gay, along with two other university presidents, were repeatedly asked if calls for genocides against Jews were against university policy.
Addressing accusations of plagiarism
Gay, who has been accused of breaching Harvard’s plagiarism policy in half of her academic works, described investigations into her scholarship as “obsessive scrutiny.”
Despite describing the investigations as “obsessive,” Gay acknowledged “some material duplicated other scholars’ language, without proper attribution.” However, she insisted that “I have never misrepresented my research findings, nor have I ever claimed credit for the research of others. Moreover, the citation errors should not obscure a fundamental truth: I proudly stand by my work and its impact on the field.”
Gay claimed that many of the people who campaigned to have her removed from Harvard presidency had “recycled tired racial stereotypes about Black talent and temperament. They pushed a false narrative of indifference and incompetence.”
Ending her opinion piece, Gay warned “Universities must remain independent venues where courage and reason unite to advance truth, no matter what forces set against them.” She did not name what “forces” she was referring to.