Read the letter of resignation by Claudine Gay

The Battle of Claudine Gay, President of Harvard, and a Founding Father of the Second Law of the American Medical Research, Revisited

When I was president, I felt blessed by the chance to serve people from all over the world who thought that Harvard welcomed all types of people, and that they could take their talent and learn from it. Please know that Harvard will be better as a result of those doors remaining open, and that is what we want you to know.

I must warn as I leave. The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader. This fight was merely a skirmish in an ongoing war to eliminate public faith in pillars of American society. Campaigns of this kind often start with attacks on education and expertise, because these are the tools that best equip communities to see through propaganda. But such campaigns don’t end there. Public health agencies, as well as news organizations, will continue to be victims of coordinated attempts to undermine their legitimacy. For the opportunists driving cynicism about our institutions, no single victory or toppled leader exhausts their zeal.

In retrospect, Claudine Gay’s fate was sealed by a single word. (She resigned the presidency of Harvard on Tuesday, just six months into her tenure.) It wasn’t like plagiarism or “genocide,” but rather a careful, neutral piece of language that could have been used in a different way. The word was “context.”

Yes, I made mistakes. I should have said more clearly in my initial response that Hamas is a terrorist organization that wants to wipe out the Jewish state. And at a congressional hearing last month, I fell into a well-laid trap. I neglected to articulate that the calls for the genocide of Jewish people are not okay and that I would use all of my powers to protect students from that kind of hate.