[News Figures] 'Claudine Gay' Appointed as Harvard University President

The Harvard University Board of Trustees in the United States has decided to retain President Claudine Gay (53), who faced pressure to resign amid controversy over anti-Semitism.

The New York Times (NYT) reported on the 12th (local time) that the Harvard Board of Trustees announced in a statement that day, "We reaffirmed our support for President Gay." All board members except Gay herself signed the statement. This was effectively a unanimous decision to retain her.

Claudine Gay, President of Harvard University, appeared and spoke at the U.S. House Education Committee hearing on the 5th (local time).
[Photo by AP/ Yonhap News]

The board stated, "After thorough discussion, we reaffirmed that President Gay is the right leader to address the difficult social issues currently facing Harvard University and to heal the community." However, the board also added, "Harvard should have expressed a clearer condemnation and opposition to the October 7 terrorist attacks by the Palestinian militant group Hamas."

President Gay has faced calls to resign since attending a hearing held by the U.S. House Education Committee on the 5th regarding anti-Semitic sentiments within Ivy League universities. Having served less than six months since her appointment, Gay was criticized for Harvard's failure to issue a statement condemning Hamas or terrorism immediately after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, leading to her summons to the hearing.

At the hearing, when Republican Representative Elise Stefanik asked whether the extreme claims by some students to "kill the Jews" violated the university's ethical standards, Gay responded, "Harvard recognizes broad freedom of expression," which sparked controversy. After calls for her resignation intensified, Gay explained in the campus newspaper, "I lost focus amid the barrage of questions from the representatives," and admitted, "I should have been clearer and more composed but was not." She added, "Incitement to violence against Jews and threats to Jewish students have no place at Harvard and will be met with appropriate measures."

A truck with a billboard criticizing Claudine Gay, President of Harvard University.
[Photo by AFP/Yonhap News]

Subsequently, Harvard faculty and alumni associations declared their support for President Gay, and with the board's decision to retain her that day, Gay remains in her position. Elizabeth Magill, President of the University of Pennsylvania, who also attended the House hearing and was embroiled in a similar anti-Semitism controversy, resigned on the 9th.

President Gay was elected in December last year as Harvard's first Black president and began her term as the 30th president in July. At the time of her election, American society was abuzz over the fact that Harvard, founded in 1636, had its first Black president in 386 years and that she was the university's second female president in history.

Born in 1970 to a Haitian immigrant family in New York, she spent most of her childhood in New York before living in Saudi Arabia following her father, who worked in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. She later returned to the U.S. and studied economics at Stanford University. After graduating from Stanford in 1992, she earned a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard in 1998. Her doctoral dissertation was recognized as the best in the field of political science, earning her Harvard's 'Toppan Prize.'

She began her academic career as a professor in Stanford's political science department in 2000 and moved to Harvard in 2006. President Gay's research primarily focused on how the election of minorities such as Black people affects public perceptions of government and how housing and residential support policies for the poor influence their political participation.

In July 2015, she was appointed dean of Harvard's social sciences division, and three years later, dean of Harvard's largest undergraduate faculty, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She was elected president last year.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.