Excerpt: In Claudine Gay’s resignation letter from her role as president of Harvard University, published in the New York Times on January 2, she expresses hope that the Harvard community remembers her short term as one characterized by “not allowing rancor and vituperation to undermine the vital process of education.” But in her op-ed, published a day later, she claims that her resignation was the result of the work of “demagogues” to “undermine the ideals animating Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness, independence, truth.”
Though Gay paints her removal from office as a tactic to stop such a campaign from gaining further traction, her refusal to admit any guilt and the Harvard Corporation’s failure to note any particular reason for the resignation suggests that her presidency should be defined by a clear abandonment of the tenets to which she and Harvard claim to have committed.
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