She was an exception

In the United States, the only first Black woman, scholar-professor of political science, government and of African and African-American Studies, President of Harvard University, has been shunted out of her job just around six months in position.

Dr. Claudine Gay, Ph.D., when she joined that position in July 2023, she had made history of many sorts. A Haitian-American, Dr. Gay is said have faced a tremendous belittling-lot in a country that is known as a citadel of higher education, home to over a dozen top-ranking globally-reputed colleges, institutes and universities. A highly respected scholar Black woman, she was an exception in many areas of work.

A well-known educationalist-administrator, Dr. Claudine Gay’s first ‘test’ was flung on her in this most demanding and a highly challenging job in just three months when Harvard University campus witnessed ugliest protests, demonstrations and strikes aftermath the October-November period last year after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel killing 1,200 people. When the attack suddenly came, most US Ivy university campuses, heavily peopled with Jewish and Muslim students, were taken aback by innumerable unseemly developments.

These disturbances were not appropriated by the American citizens, but only as Jewish and Muslim students belonging to Middle East countries did not take one another normally and often leading to clashes turning to violent incidents. The October 7 attack was said to have been planned and executed by the notorious terrorist outfit, the Hamas. It took the responsibility openly soon after. This horrendously violent act that claimed more than 1,200 lives shook the Jewish students. The tragedy attracted worldwide condemnation. It also seduced an equal response from Israel whose citizens were the main target. Therefore, Israel’s reprisal proved much more costly in terms of human loss: nearly 30,000 people are reportedly killed so far (till January 16) besides extensive loss of properties.

Meanwhile, with so many extensive inestimable losses being reported live from Israeli and the Gaza-Palestine fronts by American television profoundly affected the academics and hurt the students in the United States in multiple ways. According to one estimate, nearly 150 American universities and colleges were adversely hit by the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks.

The institutions among the worst affected were world-renowned top-ranking universities like

Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Stanford, Pennsylvania, Princeton and some others. Tensions rose high when the student protesters identified themselves on antisemitic lines: Muslims, Jewish, and Jewish-Muslim aligned with local outfits such as the ‘Students for Justice in Palestine’, ‘Long Live Palestine, Intifada, Intifada’; ‘Cornellian Jewish,’ etc.

As the student protests and campus demonstrations escalated by the day, America’s House of Representatives Committee took cognizance of this eruptible issue and debated its possibly escalating dimensions.

While tensions on the most university campuses across the country started dying down slowly as the universities’ law as order departments acted briskly and smartly. However, controversy erupted about dealing with the Jewish student protesters in Harvard University, particularly. Some pro-Zionism political leaders and faculty questioned the Harvard University President, Dr. Claudine Gay’s soft, even casual, response to antisemitism on campus.

The issue was getting blown up when the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and other comments made at the U. S. House of Representatives Committee hearing took place. This high-level meeting among senior officials, deans and vice-deans, departmental- professorial heads and the presidents, profusely criticized Dr. Gay.

This was done allegedly specially in the case of Harvard University’s President because she is Black, and that it was being done to her due to that inherent ‘racial animus.’ In addition, Dr. Gay was taken to task for not adequately responding to why ‘calling for the genocide of Jewish people at Harvard, violating the campus code of conduct.’

Meanwhile, many of Dr. Gay’s critics had also raised the issue of her not acting against those who had led a crowd in the chants of the ‘’Long Live Palestine; long live the intifada, Globalize the intifada...’’ It was suspected that such chants at the Harvard campus also inspired protesters triggering disturbances on other campuses.

Yet another serious charge against Dr. Gay was that of ‘academic dishonesty,’ and ‘cheating’. She was alleged to have ‘plagiarized, duplicated, sometimes almost verbatim, other scholars’ in doctoral dissertation, as reported by a daily newspaper, The New York Post. Dr. Gay was believed to have not accurately quoted the sources and had plagiarized. Also, in some of her research papers, she had allegedly lifted or not adequately cited the material to strengthen her own scholarship.

Though Dr. Gay had already established her scholarly reputation in her research papers, and for which she had been profusely rewarded  - she rose in academic career, from assistant professor to associate professor, to professor and dean in a very large Harvard faculty. In the emerging scenario with multiple charges against her, she felt she could not face a highly fueled, almost fatal, criticism.

While the fact is that Dr. Gay’s employer, the Harvard Corporation, asserted its full faith in her and defended her to the hilt, but Dr. Gay quit the Harvard presidency and was allowed to return to her original position of Harvard as a professor of government and Dean of the university’s largest faculty of Arts and Sciences in the department of African-American Studies.

While her departure from the Harvard presidency was hailed by many of her rivals and antagonists, including some Congressmen (meaning MPs). However, many of Dr. Gay’s friends and admirers were sad at her departure from the most prestigious Harvard.

Dr. Gay was indeed a decent human being, and a scholar of highest merit who had ‘a hefty portfolio of high-profile academic work’ to her credit. She was only the first ever, the only Black President in Harvard’s 300-year-old history who rose to the highest Harvard academic rank.

R. Dua, former professor-head, journalism department, Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), New Delhi, and  an ex-faculty Journalism, California State  University, US.

By Prof. M. R. Dua