'Yes, I made mistakes': Claudine Gay addresses plagiarism accusations, offers 'few words of warning' after resignation

After stepping down as president of Harvard university amid public scrutiny over her handling of antisemitism on campus, Claudine Gay has opened up about her reluctant exit from Harvard in an op-ed for The New York Times.

On Tuesday, Gay announced her resignation in a letter, stating that it was in the "best interests" of the university for her to go.

"It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigour," she said.

Claudine Gay claims she fell 'victim to well-laid trap'

Defending her tenure in the op-ed published on Wednesday, Gay appeared to hit out at critics like billionaire investor Bill Ackman. While admitting that she made mistakes, Gay warned that her Harvard exit was the result of a campaign by "opportunists" to sabotage American institutions to pursue their own agenda.

"My 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," she wrote.

"At tense moments, every one of us must be more skeptical than ever of the loudest and most extreme voices in our culture, however well organized or well connected they might be," she wrote. "Too often they are pursuing self-serving agendas that should be met with more questions and less credulity."

Gay, who has subjected to personal threats and “racial animus”, claimed that she fell into a "well-laid trap" when she testified about how she managed antisemitic incidents on campus after the Hamas unprecedented attack on Israel. "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."

Gay addresses plagiarism accusation in her academic writings

Since November, Ackman has written three open letters to Harvard slamming Gay for her response to the rise antisemitism incidents on campus and her academic work, accusing her of plagiarism.

"In her short tenure as President, Claudine Gay has done more damage to the reputation of Harvard University than any individual in our nearly 500-year history," Ackman wrote in one of his letters.

Addressing the plagiarism accusations in the opinion piece, Gay admitted that there was plagiarism in some of her academic writings. She, however, claimed that she "promptly requested corrections" from the journals that published her work.

"I have never misrepresented my research findings, nor have I ever claimed credit for the research of others. Moreover, the citation errors should not obscure a fundamental truth: I proudly stand by my work and its impact on the field," Gay wrote in her op-ed.

Claudine Gay resigned after rocky testimony

On December 5, Gay, Massachusetts Institute of Technology President and former University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill testified before a US House of Representatives committee over an increase in antisemitism on college campuses following the Israel-Hamas war.

The trio failed to give any definitive response to a question raised by US Republican Representative Elise Stefanik as to whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate university's code of conduct regarding bullying and harassment. Therefore, 70 US lawmakers cited dissatisfaction with their testimony and signed a letter demanding that the governing boards of the three varsities remove the presidents.