Claudine Gay, the former president of Harvard who resigned on Tuesday, will potentially still be making a close to seven-figure salary when she returns to a position on the school’s faculty.
Harvard tax records show that Gay, who was appointed president on July 1, earned $879,000 in 2021 and $824,000 in 2020 as the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. While new records have yet to show how much she made in her short tenure as president, her predecessor, Lawrence Bacow, earned over $1.3 million while he was president in 2021.
Gay’s resignation comes less than a month after Liz Magill resigned as president of the University of Pennsylvania. Their departures were triggered by the controversy surrounding their testimonies during a Congressional hearing where Gay, Magill, and other administrators gave evasive answers regarding their codes of conduct amid calls for mass extermination of Jews. This led to criticism from students, faculty, and others who accused them of not doing enough to combat antisemitism and support Jewish students during the Israel-Hamas war.
Gay later apologized for her testimony, but what followed was scrutiny over allegations of plagiarism in her past academic writings, including her doctoral thesis at Harvard. Harvard Corporation, the entity that runs the university, announced on December 12 that she has been investigated and cleared, noting that while some of her academic writings would be “corrected,” her job at the institution was secure.
But this proved insufficient for Gay, now Harvard’s shortest-serving president at just a little over six months, to stay. She was slapped with more accusations of plagiarism, and the students started to complain. She resigned on Tuesday, stating it is “in the best interests of Harvard” to do so.
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