Haitian American Former Harvard President Says She Was Called The “N-Word”

News Americas, BOSTON, MA, Weds, Jan 3, 2024: A day after Haitian American Dr. Claudine Gay resigned as president of Harvard University after an uncharacteristically tough six months, she is speaking out and sharing her personal experience in a New York Times op ed.

Former Harvard University President Haitian American Dr. Claudine Gay testifies during a House Education and Workforce Committee Hearing on holding campus leaders accountable and confronting antisemitism on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Dec. 05, 2023, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Dr Gay, who made history as the University’s first black president, the first Caribbean American and Haitian American and only second female President in its 388 year history, said she was “called the N-word” more times than she cared to count in the past six months. But in the op ed she did not give more details of the verbal attacks or shared any examples or incidents.

Her tenure is the shortest in the history of the university. In her resignation letter, she cited personal attacks “fueled by racial animus” and stated that she wished to act in the “best interests” of the Harvard community and to enable it to navigate current tensions sparked by the Israel-Gaza war.

In her Times Op Ed she stated: “On Tuesday, I made the wrenching but necessary decision to resign as Harvard’s president. For weeks, both I and the institution to which I’ve devoted my professional life have been under attack,” she wrote. “My character and intelligence have been impugned. My commitment to fighting antisemitism has been questioned. My inbox has been flooded with invective, including death threats. I’ve been called the N-word more times than I care to count.”

Gay admitted to making “mistakes,” especially in her initial response to the “atrocities of Oct. 7,” aka, the attack by Hamas forces on southern Israel.

“I should have stated more forcefully what all people of good conscience know: Hamas is a terrorist organization that seeks to eradicate the Jewish state,” Gay stated. “And at a congressional hearing last month, I fell into a well-laid trap. I neglected to clearly articulate that calls for the genocide of Jewish people are abhorrent and unacceptable and that I would use every tool at my disposal to protect students from that kind of hate.”

She said that her “hope is that by stepping down I will deny demagogues the opportunity to further weaponize my presidency in their campaign to undermine the ideals animating Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness, independence, truth.”

But she warned that “the campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader.”

“This was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel 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,” she added. “But such campaigns don’t end there. Trusted institutions of all types — from public health agencies to news organizations — will continue to fall victim to coordinated attempts to undermine their legitimacy and ruin their leaders’ credibility. For the opportunists driving cynicism about our institutions, no single victory or toppled leader exhausts their zeal.”

Gay is the daughter of Haitian immigrants to the US. She spent much of her childhood in New York and, later, Saudi Arabia, where her father worked for the US Army Corps of Engineers. Gay also attended a private boarding school, Phillip Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, and is the cousin of author and academic Roxane Gay.

A political scientist by training, Gay previously served as dean of social science for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard. She first joined Harvard in 2006 as a professor in the Department of Government, where she also completed her PhD in 1998. Gay earned her bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University in 1992.

Gay, 53, was named the Wilbur A Cowett Professor of Government at Harvard in 2015. She is also a professor of African and African American studies. She became the 30th president of Harvard University when she took the post on July 1, 2023. She succeeded Lawrence S Bacow, 72, who had served as president since 2018.

Following Gay’s Congress testimony in December, a Washington Free Beacon report and a Substack post by right-wing activist Christopher F Rufo made claims about alleged plagiarism by Gay in research papers from 1993 and 2017, and in the acknowledgements of her 1997 Harvard dissertation.

Harvard’s board investigated these allegations in December and concluded that she did not violate their standards for research. Without specifying which work, the board said that some articles merely required additional citations.

“President Gay is proactively requesting four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications,” Harvard Corporation said in an email to affiliates.

Dr. Gay returns to serve as professor of government and of African and African American studies. She defended her academic work in the Op Ed and its impact on her field of political science, saying that some of her critics “recycled tired racial stereotypes.”

“It is not lost on me that I make an ideal canvas for projecting every anxiety about the generational and demographic changes unfolding on American campuses: a Black woman selected to lead a storied institution,” she added. “Someone who views diversity as a source of institutional strength and dynamism. Someone who has advocated a modern curriculum that spans from the frontier of quantum science to the long-neglected history of Asian Americans. Someone who believes that a daughter of Haitian immigrants has something to offer to the nation’s oldest university.”

Harvard has tapped Alan M. Garber, a White economist and physician, provost and chief academic officer, to serve as interim president until a permanent replacement can be named. Garber was reportedly raised by Jewish parents, and has expressed regret about the University’s initial response to the war in Israel and Gaza.