Harvard faculty rally around beleaguered university president

Harvard University President Claudine Gay testifies before a House Education and The Workforce Committee hearing titled “Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism” on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., December 5, 2023. REUTERS

Several hundred faculty members at Harvard University on Sunday signed a petition asking school administrators to not bend to political pressure to fire the school’s president over her Congressional testimony about antisemitism on campus.

A concisely worded petition was signed by at least 570 professors and was delivered Sunday evening to the 13-member Harvard Corporation, which has the power to fire university president Claudine Gay. More professors indicated they also wanted to sign, according to a co-author of the petition.

Pressure has hiked on Gay over the weekend, after University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned on Saturday.

Gay, Magill and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth testified before a U.S. House of Representatives committee last week about a rise in antisemitism on college campuses following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October.

The trio declined to give a definitive “yes” or “no” answer to Republican Representative Elise Stefanik’s question of whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools’ codes of conduct regarding bullying and harassment, saying they had to balance it against free speech protections.

More than 70 U.S. lawmakers signed onto a letter demanding that the governing boards of the three universities remove the presidents, citing dissatisfaction with their testimony.

But Alison Frank Johnson, a Harvard professor of history and a co-author of the petition delivered to the school’s corporation, rejected the politicized calls for Gay’s removal.

“I get the impression that many people don’t know how much support she has, as a scholar, colleague, and administrator, within the university – including from people who sometimes disagree with her,” Frank Johnson wrote in an email. “We don’t want to lose her because of a political stunt.”

Frank Johnson would not provide the language of the petition, but confirmed that it asks the Harvard Corporation “not to bend to political pressure, including pressure to remove the president.”

Jewish students, families and alumni have accused the schools of tolerating antisemitism, especially in statements by pro-Palestinian demonstrators since the Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and killed around 1,200. That attack prompted a massive counterattack by Israel that has left over 17,700 Palestinians dead, according to the Gaza health ministry.