Harvard President Claudine Gay submits her resignation
In mid-December, Gay had averted a resignation after the Harvard Corporation, the university's governing body, backed her. Gay - the first African-American female president in Harvard's history - had previously been questioned about anti-Semitism at a congressional hearing. When asked whether students who call for the "genocide of Jews" on campus violate the university's code of conduct, she replied: "It depends on the context."
In addition to this much-criticized statement, Gay was also confronted with accusations of plagiarism. The 53-year-old was accused of not quoting accurately in her publications. In July, Gay, who was born in New York to Haitian immigrants, was appointed the first African-American female president in the history of the world-famous university near Boston in the US state of Massachusetts.
In recent weeks, there have been loud calls for her resignation, including from a group of more than 70 members of Congress. However, patrons of the university and more than 700 faculty members have also sided with her.
Since the attack on Israel by the radical Islamic group Hamas on October 7 and the subsequent start of the Israeli bombardment of targets in the Gaza Strip, anti-Semitic incidents and hate crimes against Jews, but also Muslims, have increased in the USA. There have also been anti-Semitic actions at universities.
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Source: www.stern.de
