“Yes, I made mistakes,” Gay wrote in the article, her first public comment since stepping down as the shortest-serving president in Harvard history. But she also said that she was the target of vicious racism and death threats as Harvard’s first Black president. Calls for her resignation, amplified by Republican politicians and conservative activists, only grew louder as Gay faced allegations of plagiarism in her academic work. “My critics found instances in my academic writings where some material duplicated other scholars’ language, without proper attribution,” she wrote. Gay framed the backlash that led to her removal as bigger than Harvard, calling it just one example of a wider attack on higher education and public institutions.

Source: New York Times January 05, 2024 20:08 UTC