Hundreds of Harvard faculty members are urging the university to keep its president, Claudine Gay, in command as she faces calls from some lawmakers and donors to step down over comments at a congressional hearing on antisemitism, The Associated Press reported on Monday.
A petition signed by more than 600 faculty members asks the school’s governing body to resist pressures to dismiss Gay “that are at odds with Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom.”
Gay, together with two other university presidents, danced around a question from Rep. Elise Stefanik at a hearing last week on whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” is against the universities’ respective codes of conduct.
Gay replied that when “speech crosses into conduct, that violates our policies.”
She later apologized for the remarks, telling the school newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, “I am sorry. Words matter.”
Still, the calls for Gay to be dismissed have grown in recent days. On Sunday, billboard trucks demanding Gay be fired were deployed to the campus.
"FIRE GAY," the privately-funded trucks read, accompanied by photos of Gay while she appeared before Congress last Tuesday.
Harvard’s highest governing body was scheduled to meet Monday and has not issued a public statement since the hearing.
The faculty petition aims to parry what many of its signers see as a Republican attempt to wield influence over the elite institution.
Those backing the petition include some professors who have been critical of Gay. Among them is Laurence Tribe, a legal scholar who described Gay’s testimony as “hesitant, formulaic, and bizarrely evasive.” He endorsed the petition because “it’s dangerous for universities to be readily bullied into micromanaging their policies,” he said in an interview, adding his view on Gay hasn’t changed.
“I think she now has a great deal to prove, and I’m not at all sure that she will be able to prove it,” he said, according to AP. “I don’t think she is out of the woods by any means.”
The billboard trucks calling for Gay’s dismissal follow a similar protest last week on the University of Pennsylvania’s campus calling for the firing of Elizabeth Magill, the school’s president. Magill announced her resignation on Saturday.