After facing backlash over her disastrous testimony, Harvard president Claudine Gay apologised for her response on antisemitism. The apology comes just days after Gay, the president of the University of Pennsylvania and the president of MIT testified at a House committee hearing focused on antisemitism on campus.
Gay had failed to give a direct answer when asked about whether calls for "genocide" against Jews would violate Harvard's code of conduct.
"I am sorry...When words amplify distress and pain, I don’t know how you could feel anything but regret," said Gay in an interview published in the Harvard Crimson.
Later Gay said that she would have conveyed that calls for violence against Jewish community have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged.
"Substantively, I failed to convey what is my truth," she added.
Over perceived inaction against rising antisemitism on their campuses, universities including Harvard, UPenn and MIT have come under fire in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.
At UPenn, President Liz Magill has been under immense pressure to resign for weeks, as major donors and others say they have lost confidence in her ability to lose the school.
Harvard is also among 14 colleges under investigation by the Department of Education “for discrimination involving shared ancestry” since the October 7 Hamas attacks.
The testimonies had drawn a lot of criticism from many including donors, politicians, alumini and business leaders. UPenn's Magill faces a donor rebellion as well.
70 US lawmakers sent a letter to board members of all three univeristies, demanding the dismissal of Gay and presidents of UPenn and MIT.
“Given this moment of crisis, we demand that your boards immediately remove each of these presidents from their positions and that you provide an actionable plan to ensure that Jewish and Israeli students, teachers, and faculty are safe on your campuses,” the lawmakers wrote.
“The university presidents’ responses to questions aimed at addressing the growing trend of antisemitism on college and university campuses were abhorrent,” the bipartisan group added.
