How the Harvard Board Broke Up with Claudine Gay

Claudine Gay was in Rome on a family vacation on December 27 when Penny Pritzker, the leader of Harvard University’s board of trustees, called to ask: Did she think there was a way forward with her as president of the school?

Ms. Pritzker sounded tired and the question was open-ended, two people with knowledge of the conversation said. But Dr. Gay understood what it meant. Her six-month term as president of Harvard was over. 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 the public debate after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza. Not only did the president of the university lose her job, but the secret workings of its governing body, the Harvard Corporation, were exposed.

For weeks, the board had supported the embattled president as she faced withering criticism over her tepid 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 led the selection of Dr. Gay, as the school’s first black president, was an especially fervent supporter.

On December 12, the company issue 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 societal issues we face.”

But within two weeks, the once-strong support began to disappear, according to interviews with a dozen people with knowledge of the discussions, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the deliberations. As the board members flew to ski resorts and beaches for the holidays, they underwent a dramatic change of heart about their president.

A handful of the twelve members of the board of directors, including Dr. Gay, came from great American fortunes built on name brands. Others were self-made financiers, philanthropists or retired academics. All but one went to Harvard. Accustomed to a certain level of success, they had hoped that their December 12 statement would herald a new beginning and demonstrate their commitment to righting the ship.

The company told Dr. Gay that its members actively wanted to help her restore the campus, which was ravaged by protests that disrupted classes and made Jewish students feel unsafe.

Along with the public statement of support they offered on December 12, board members asked Dr. Gay privately to help devise a plan to turn things around, two people with knowledge of the discussions said. For about a week, Dr. Gay and her staff on a plan they called a “spring set,” one of the people said. In the new year, she would appear all over campus, holding office hours and expressing her empathy. Task forces would be set up to tackle anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

But before Dr. Gay was able to send the board additional details, more trouble broke out. On December 19, new allegations emerged of more than 40 examples of plagiarism in Dr. Gay, first reported in conservative media. When she sent her latest plan to the board the next day, some members told her they liked it, but for others it appeared she didn’t understand the urgency of the spreading crisis, according to people with knowledge of the board members’ thinking. .

Dr. Gay stands by the overall integrity of her work. Harvard has said she has not committed any “research misconduct,” although she has offered to make minor changes to some of her previous writings in response to the allegations.

Cracks in the board’s support began to show. Timothy R. Barakett, Harvard’s treasurer and a relatively new member of the corporation, was particularly concerned. From the beginning, he didn’t think that loving Dr. Gay had a shelf life. He told his fellow board members that Dr.’s poor leadership and academic conduct. Gay could disqualify her from running for president, those who spoke to him said.

Mr Barakett did not think Dr.’s apology was appropriate. Gay knocked, arguing that she failed to take full responsibility for her plagiarism, according to donors, professors and others who spoke to board members.

Initially, Mr. Barakett was an outlier in the group. But his arguments slowly won supporters in the board. One 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 of New York City, where Flynn Cratty, a prominent Harvard academic, sharply criticized Dr. Gay and the university to academic freedom.

A week later, Mr. Finnegan and Tracy Palandjian, another board member, to Dr. Cratty and other professors who expressed concerns about Harvard’s leadership at a dinner in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Mr. Finnegan walked away from these events with shaken confidence in Dr. Gay, and he soon joined Mr. Barakett’s camp, according to people briefed on the events.

From the beginning of the crisis, Dr. Gay is not only bombarded with criticism and bad press, but also with death threats, racist messages and phone calls. As December progressed, it became more intense. Dr. Gay had moved into the official residence of Harvard’s president only a month earlier, following renovations. The phone kept ringing and when she answered, she heard racial slurs before the callers hung up. The police kept an eye on the house 24 hours a day.

She was exhausted and scared. As the holidays approached, her husband and teenage son urged her to go on a long-planned vacation to Rome. Desperate for a breather, Dr. Gay and her family away on Friday, December 22.

Members of the Corporation also spread to vacation homes and resorts around the world. Ms. Pritzker, a former Secretary of Commerce and heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune, spent time in Aspen, Col. Kenneth I. Chenault, a former CEO of American Express, went to Miami. Mr. Barakett was also in Florida, while Karen Gordon Mills, former leader of the Small Business Administration and heir 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 destination around Christmas, they were swamped by a new wave of friends and relatives. Some people told Ms. Pritzker that she might be forced to resign from the Harvard Corporation for helping select Dr. Gay and her supported.

More than one board member had children who attended Harvard. At least one of them worried that other students would harass them because of their parents’ role on the board and bad press, according to two people who spoke to members of the company.

It was clear that the controversies were not over. On Christmas Eve, William Ackman, a hedge fund manager and staunch opponent of Dr. Gay, on X that she had been asked to resign – which was not true at the time. He also revealed that she had hired outside lawyers – which was true. Newspaper articles about Dr. Gay and the board just kept coming.

At this point Dr. Gay somewhat removed from the situation. She called Mr. Chenault from Rome around Christmas, and he was sympathetic and supportive, said a person familiar with the conversation. On Christmas Day, she contacted Ms. Pritzker.

By then, the board’s action had shifted from formal meetings to a flurry of phone calls and email discussions among small groups of members, with Ms. Pritzker leading many of the conversations.

The board had been brought down by new accusations of plagiarism, the drumbeat of news articles, and the barrage of criticism and advice from influential strangers and loved ones.

For weeks, the focus of board discussions was on finding a way to get Dr. Keep Gay and end the crisis on campus. But by the day after Christmas, that had changed, people briefed on the events said. The board members agreed that they faced a leadership crisis and that the best path forward for Harvard was without Dr. Gay in the chairman’s chair. Everyone agreed it was time for Mrs. Pritzker to call her.

During that December 27 phone call, Dr. Gay said she would resign. Ms. Pritzker gave her the weekend to arrange her departure, three people with knowledge of the conversation said. In subsequent telephone conversations, the two began discussing the terms of Dr.’s departure. Gay, including what the Harvard Corporation and its statements should say and an agreement that she would remain on the Harvard faculty.

They left the rest of the details to the lawyers.