500-Plus Harvard Faculty Members Sign Letter Supporting President Claudine Gay

More than 500 Harvard faculty members have signed a letter urging the Harvard Corporation not to fire school president Claudine Gay after remarks she made regarding anti-semitism on campus drew backlash.

The faculty at Harvard University is publicly standing with the school’s president, Claudine Gay.

More than 500 educators at the Ivy League institution have signed a petition calling for the board not to fire Gay for her remarks on antisemitism on school grounds.

According to Reuters, the letter of support was sent to the Harvard Corporation, a 13-person entity authorized to fire Gay, on Dec. 10.

The move comes after multiple university presidents have been condemned over their words on antisemitism. Gay was included alongside many other presidents, including those from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), to testify at the U.S. House of Representative on Dec. 5 about the matter, especially as it pertains to free speech on college campuses.

In the letter, which follows a primarily Republican-backed petition for the removal of the presidents, the professors called for the corporation to “resist political pressures” that have resulted in the resignation of one of those involved in the congressional hearing, UPenn’s President Liz Magill.

In the letter, the faculty urged the corporation “in the strongest possible terms to defend the independence of the university and to resist political pressures that are at odds with Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom, including calls for the removal of President Claudine Gay,” as detailed by the Harvard Crimson, Harvard’s student newspaper.

All three leaders have faced significant backlash for their unwillingness to provide a definitive answer to a conservative lawmaker’s question of whether students calling for a genocide of Jewish people would violate their institutions’ codes of conduct. In response, Gay was adamant that it “depends on the context.”

The inquisition was fueled by the international conversation regarding the Israeli conflict with Hamas, which has also resulted in students protesting for Palestine to be targeted as anti-semitic by the school’s Zionist community.

Gay, Harvard’s first Black female president, has since apologized for her words.