Harvard’s Claudine Gay set to keep her nearly $900K annual salary despite resigning as university president

She won’t be leading the Crimson, but green shouldn’t be a problem.

Outgoing Harvard University president Claudine Gay will still likely earn nearly $900,000 a year despite being forced to resign her position as the school’s top administrator.

Political science professor Gay — who stepped down amid a tempest of allegations that she did not do enough to combat antisemitism and academic plagiarism Tuesday — will return to a position on the Cambridge, Mass., school’s faculty.

Prior to being named president just six months ago, Gay earned $879,079 as a faculty of arts and sciences dean in 2021 and $824,068 in 2020, according to records published by the university.

Her new position was not specified Tuesday, but she is expected to receive a salary comparable to what she previously received — if not higher.

It was also unclear how much of her presidential salary of roughly $1 million Gay would be entitled to after only serving in the post for six months.

Her predecessor, Lawrence Bacow, pulled in $1.3 million annually before his departure, according to the Harvard Crimson.

Alan M. Garber, who currently serves as provost and chief academic officer, will serve as interim president until the school selects a new chief, officials said Tuesday.

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House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) — a Harvard graduate who emerged as Gay’s chief critic — ripped the decision to allow her to remain on the faculty.

Stefanik argued that Gay’s plagiarism charges are an indelible stain that mars the school’s legitimacy.

“She’s not fit to be a faculty member,” Stefanik told The Post.

“It’s unacceptable when you have students at Harvard who would be expelled for plagiarism to allow a faculty member who has nearly 50 examples of plagiarism in their very slim body of academic work. It’s absurd and everybody knows it. Harvard knows it too.”

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A member of Harvard’s student Honor Council also accused administrators of having differing ethical standards for faculty and students.

“Gay’s getting off easy,” the anonymous student told the school paper, noting the simple omission of a quotation mark or absent citation could result in serious consequences such as one term of probation and the stripping away of a student’s “good standing” status. 

Following Gay’s departure, there are rumblings that the board which publicly stuck by her until the very end should also be shaken up.

Harvard president Claudine Gay resigns

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Here’s how we got here:

• Harvard first faced calls to fire Gay after she stood by the more than 30 Harvard student groups that published a letter claiming they held Israel “entirely responsible” for Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.
• Gay faced further calls to step down after disastrous House testimony on antisemitism, in which the embattled president told Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) that calls for genocide against the Jews would only violate Harvard’s rules depending on their “context.”
• Harvard announced Gay would remain president despite the school losing a reported $1 billion in donations.
• Journalists Christopher Rufo and Chris Brunet revealed that the embattled president plagiarized sections of her doctoral thesis, Harvard had previously covered up its own probe and threatened The Post when it looked into plagiarism allegations against Gay.
• Former Professor Carol Swain, whose work Gay is accused of plagiarizing, said Harvard lacks the courage to fire “its first black president.” She added that Gay is “getting a free pass.”
• Billionaire Bill Ackman, a Harvard graduate and donor, claims the school won’t fire her because it would look like it was “kowtowing” to him.
• Four doxxing trucks are parked outside Gay’s home, calling her “the best friend Hamas ever had.”
• The embattled prez was hit with six new plagiarism allegations on Monday, January 1, 2024.
• She was set to step down the following day.

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Visiting chemistry scholar Frank Laukien singled out billionaire Chicago hotel owner and senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation Penny Pritzker, telling the New York Times she should “share accountability and resign immediately.”

He added in an email: “We need multiple new independent members on the Harvard Corporation that are not tainted by recent events and failures, and who are not part of the long-standing cronyism at the top of Harvard.”

Gay — who said she was stepping down to allow the school to stabilize amid the firestorm — added in her resignation statement that she’s looking forward to returning to a faculty post “and to the scholarship and teaching that are the lifeblood of what we do.”