Breaking days of silence, Harvard University’s key oversight board on Tuesday issued a statement of unanimous support for Claudine Gay, the university’s president, a week after her testimony at a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism caused a national uproar.
“Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing,” the Fellows of Harvard College said in an email to the university community.
Gay and the presidents of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania sparked an outcry when they were asked during the Dec. 5 hearing if calling for the genocide of Jews on their campuses would violate their schools’ codes of conduct. The university presidents’ legalistic and equivocal responses incited calls for their resignations.
Sally Kornbluth, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who also faced criticism for her testimony, received a statement of “full and unreserved support” from her governing board last week. Liz Magill resigned Saturday as the president of the University of Pennsylvania.
Here’s an overview of the controversy.
What happened during the congressional hearing?
The controversy over the hearing before the House Committee on Education & the Workforce focused on a three-minute exchange between Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, and the three university presidents.
Stefanik and the other committee members were asking the presidents about their efforts to combat campus antisemitism in light of student demonstrations related to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
“Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate MIT’s code of conduct or rule regarding bullying or harassment, yes or no?” Stefanik asked Kornbluth.
“If targeted at individuals, not making public statements,” Kornbluth responded.
“Yes or no? Calling for the genocide of Jews does not constitute bullying or harassment?” Stefanik asked.
Kornbluth seemed to challenge the question’s premise, saying she had “not heard calling for the genocide for Jews on our campus.” She added that she was aware of chants at MIT that “can be antisemitic, depending on the context when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people.”
Stefanik then posed almost identical questions to Gay and Magill, who offered strikingly similar responses.
Whether calls for the genocide of Jews violate the rules against bullying and harassment “depends on the context,” Gay said. “When it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct, and we do take action.”
Who had called for Gay’s resignation?
Critics calling for Gay’s resignation had included prominent Jewish Harvard alumni, as well as Stefanik and more than 70 other members of Congress, mostly Republicans, who on Friday called for the removal of Gay, Kornbluth, and Magill.
Among alumni, hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman emerged as one of the sharpest critics of Gay since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, which triggered the war in Gaza that has claimed thousands of lives.
The conflict has roiled US campuses and some Jewish students have accused pro-Palestinian demonstrators of using antisemitic rhetoric, which the pro-Palestinian protesters have denied.
“In her short tenure as President, Claudine Gay has done more damage to the reputation of Harvard University than any individual in our nearly 500-year history,” Ackman said Sunday on X, quoting a letter he sent to Harvard’s governing bodies.
The Harvard Jewish Alumni Association, which formed in October over concerns about campus antisemitism, sent a letter to the Harvard Corporation and top administrators condemning Gay’s congressional testimony but stopped short of calling for her resignation.
Rabbi David Wolpe announced last week that he would resign from an antisemitism advisory group that Gay recently convened, citing the congressional hearing as a catalyst.
Who called on Harvard to stand by Gay?
On Sunday, hundreds of Harvard University faculty members signed a letter urging the school’s administration to resist calls to remove Gay.
The letter had received more than 550 signatures Sunday night after circulating for several hours. It was signed by faculty from across the university’s departments and graduate schools.
The letter, addressed to the president and fellows of Harvard College, argued that external political calls to remove Gay were “at odds with Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom.” It called on administrators to “defend the independence of the university.”
“The critical work of defending a culture of free inquiry in our diverse community cannot proceed if we let its shape be dictated by outside forces,” stated the letter, which was obtained by the Globe.
Ryan Enos, a professor of government who was among the first to sign, said in an interview that “there is agreement [among faculty] that it’s wrong to have politicians and alumni pressuring who should be the president of the university.”
“The reason for that is it could interfere with free inquiry, which is the bedrock of how universities run in a free country,” Enos said.
What has Gay said about her congressional testimony?
In a recent interview with the Harvard Crimson, the university’s student newspaper, Gay apologized for her testimony.
“I am sorry,” Gay told the Crimson on Thursday. “Words matter.”
“I got caught up in what had become at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures,” she said. “What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged.”
Material from prior Globe stories was used in this report.
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com.