Claudine Gay was in Rome on a family vacation on December 27 when Penny Pritzker, head of Harvard University’s board of trustees, called her to ask: Did you think there was a way forward with her as president of the school?
Ms. Pritzker seemed tired and it was posed as an open question, two people with knowledge of the conversation said. But Dr. Gay understood what it meant. Her six-month term as president of Harvard had ended. On January 2 she announced her resignation.
That marked the end of one of the most tumultuous periods in Harvard’s 387-year history, a controversy that thrust the school into public debate after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the subsequent Hamas invasion of Gaza. Israel. Not only did the university president lose her job, but the secret workings of her board of directors, the Harvard Corporation, were exposed.
For weeks, the board had stood by its embattled president as she dealt with harsh criticism over her lukewarm response to anti-Semitism on campus, her disastrous testimony before a House panel and mounting accusations of plagiarism in her academic work. Ms. Pritzker, who had spearheaded the selection of Dr. Gay as the school’s first black president, was an especially ardent supporter.
On December 12, the corporation issued a statement in support of Dr. Gay, citing “our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and address the very serious social issues we face.”
But within two weeks, the once strong support had begun to dissolve, according to interviews with a dozen people with knowledge of the discussions, including those who had spoken directly to Dr. Gay, Ms. Pritzker and other members of the committee. board or were informed about their thoughts and actions. They requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the deliberations. As board members traveled to ski towns and beaches for vacations, they had a dramatic change of heart about their president.
A handful of the 12 board members, including Dr. Gay, came from large American fortunes based on well-known brands. Others were self-made financiers, philanthropists or retired academics. All but one attended Harvard. Accustomed to some level of success, they hoped his December 12 statement would signal a new beginning and show their commitment to righting the ship.
The corporation told Dr. Gay that its members wanted to actively help her heal the campus, which had been racked by protests that disrupted classes and left Jewish students feeling unsafe.
Along with the public statement of support they offered on Dec. 12, board members privately asked Dr. Gay to help them come up with a plan to turn things around, two people with knowledge of the discussions said. Over the next week, Dr. Gay and her staff created a plan they called a “spring reset,” one of the people said. When the new year rolled around, she would show up all over campus, holding office hours, and expressing her empathy. She would have task forces to address anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
But before Dr. Gay could send additional details to the board, more problems arose. On December 19, new allegations emerged of more than 40 examples of plagiarism in Dr. Gay’s academic work, first reported in conservative media outlets. When he sent his latest plan to the board the next day, some members told him they liked him, but to others he showed that he didn’t understand the urgency of the expanding crisis, according to people with knowledge of the members’ thinking. of the board. .
Dr. Gay has defended the overall integrity of her work. Harvard has said that she did not commit “research misconduct,” although she did offer to make minor changes to some of her previous writings in the wake of the allegations.
Cracks were beginning to appear in the junta’s support. Especially concerned was Timothy R. Barakett, treasurer of Harvard and a relatively new member of the corporation. From the beginning, he didn’t think keeping Dr. Gay was viable. He told his fellow board members that Dr. Gay’s poor leadership and academic conduct could disqualify her for the presidency, those who spoke with him said.
Barakett did not believe Dr. Gay’s apology was accurate and argued that she was not taking full responsibility for her plagiarism, according to donors, professors and others who spoke to board members.
At first, Barakett was an outlier in the group. But his arguments little by little gained followers on the board of directors. One of them was Paul J. Finnegan, co-founder of Madison Dearborn Partners, a private equity firm. In mid-December, he learned of a recent closed-door session at the Harvard Club in New York City, where Flynn Cratty, a prominent Harvard scholar, pointedly criticized Dr. Gay and the university’s commitment to freedom. academic.
A week later, Finnegan and Tracy Palandjian, another board member, heard Dr. Cratty and other professors express their concerns about Harvard’s leadership at a dinner in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Finnegan emerged from these events with his trust in Dr. Gay shaken and soon joined Barakett’s camp, according to people briefed on these events.
Since the beginning of the crisis, Dr. Gay had been bombarded not only with criticism and bad press, but also with death threats, racist messages and phone calls. As December progressed, that became more intense. Dr. Gay had moved into the official residence of the president of Harvard just a month earlier, following renovations. The phone kept ringing and when he picked it up he heard racial slurs before the callers hung up. The police guarded the house 24 hours a day.
I was exhausted and scared. As the holidays approached, her husband and her teenage son pressured her to go to Rome on a long-scheduled vacation. Desperate for a break, Dr. Gay and her family flew out on Friday, December 22.
Members of the corporation also fanned out to vacation homes and resorts around the world. Ms. Pritzker, former Secretary of Commerce and heiress to the Hyatt Hotels fortune, spent time in Aspen, Colorado. Kenneth I. Chenault, former CEO of American Express, went to Miami. Barakett was also in Florida, while Karen Gordon Mills, former leader of the Small Business Administration and heiress to the Tootsie Roll fortune, was at an economic conference in India.
The board members had received a lot of advice and criticism from others in their wealthy circles, Harvard alumni, and donors. But when they arrived at their holiday spots around Christmas they were besieged by a new wave of friends and family. Some people told Pritzker that she might be forced to resign from the Harvard Corporation because she had helped elect Dr. Gay and supported it.
More than one board member had children studying at Harvard. At least one was concerned that other students would harass him because of his parents’ role on the board and bad press, according to two people who spoke to members of the corporation.
It was clear that the controversies were not dying. On Christmas Eve, William Ackman, a hedge fund manager and a vigorous opponent of Dr. Gay, posted on X that he had been asked to resign, which was not true at the time. He also revealed that she had hired outside lawyers, which was true. News articles about Dr. Gay and the board kept coming.
At this point, Dr. Gay was somewhat removed from the situation. He called Mr. Chenault from Rome on Christmas and he was understanding and understanding, said a person familiar with the conversation. He approached Ms. Pritzker on Christmas Day.
By then, board action had moved from formal meetings to a flurry of phone calls and email discussions among small groups of members, with Pritzker guiding many of the conversations.
The board had been brought down by new accusations of plagiarism, the noise of news articles, and the barrage of criticism and advice from strangers and influential loved ones.
For weeks, the focus of board conversations had been finding a way to keep Dr. Gay and end the crisis on campus. But the day after Christmas, that had changed, people briefed on the events said. Board members agreed that they were dealing with a leadership crisis and that the best path forward for Harvard was without Dr. Gay in the presidency. They all agreed that it was time for Mrs. Pritzker to call her.
In that Dec. 27 phone call, Dr. Gay said she was resigning. Pritzker gave him the weekend to decide on her departure, three people with knowledge of the conversation said. In subsequent phone calls, the two began negotiating the terms of Dr. Gay’s departure, including what the Harvard Corporation’s statements and her statements should say and an agreement that she would remain on the Harvard faculty.
The rest of the details were left to the lawyers.
