Prominent civil rights activists are rallying behind Claudine Gay following her resignation as president of Harvard University in what they believe is a racist attack on Black leaders, particularly women.
Politico reported that Gay, the first Black woman to lead the Ivy League institution, announced her resignation on Tuesday following weeks of criticism for plagiarism allegations and her handling of antisemitism on campus.
“Those who had relentlessly campaigned to oust me since the fall often trafficked in lies and ad hominem insults, not reasoned argument,” Gay wrote in the New York Times Wednesday. “They recycled tired racial stereotypes about Black talent and temperament. They pushed a false narrative of indifference and incompetence. My inbox has been flooded with invective, including death threats. I’ve been called the N-word more times than I care to count.”
Her resignation letter and a statement from Harvard’s governor board, which stood behind her presidency, said she faced “personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus,” according to Politico.
“President Gay’s resignation is about more than a person or a single incident,” Rev. Al Sharpton said in a Tuesday statement. “This is an attack on every Black woman in this country who’s put a crack in the glass ceiling.”
Sharpton, who called the departure “an assault on the health, strength and future of diversity, equity and inclusion,” fired back at Harvard alum and billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who was among Gay’s leading critics as he urged her to step down and implied that her race partially motivated her hiring.
“Most of all,” Sharpton opined, “this was the result of Bill Ackman’s relentless campaign against President Gay, not because of her leadership or credentials but because he felt she was a DEI hire.”
The civil rights activist, radio show host and MSNBC political analyst shared plans for his group, the National Action Network, to protest Thursday at Ackman’s New York headquarters.
“If he doesn’t think Black Americans belong in the C-Suite, the Ivy League, or any other hallowed halls,” said Sharpton, “we’ll make ourselves at home outside his office.”
Ackman consistently shared his disdain for Gay on his X account and penned an open letter to Harvard condemning her for not denouncing the October Hamas assault on Israel in her initial statement.
“President Gay resigned because she lost the confidence of the University at large due to her actions and inactions and other failures of leadership,” Ackman posted on X on Tuesday as he addressed backlash regarding his involvement in Gay’s resignation. “Gay resigned because it was untenable for her to remain President of Harvard due to her failings of leadership.”
Last month, Morehouse College President David Thomas criticized Ackman for remarks on X in which he stated that Harvard’s presidential search committee “would not consider a candidate who did not meet the DEI office’s criteria.”
“Mr. Ackman and others are right to call attention to issues of antisemitism at his alma mater where he attended as a Jewish student,” Thomas noted on LinkedIn, Politico reported. “To turn the question to the legitimacy of President Gay’s selection because she is a black woman is a dog whistle we have heard before: black and female, equal not qualified. We must call it out.”
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