Several hundred faculty members voice support for Harvard president

Several hundred Harvard faculty members signed a petition in support of school President Claudine Gay amid calls for her resignation over comments about Jewish genocide at a House hearing last week.  

The two-sentence petition toward Harvard Corporation, a committee with the authority to fire Gay, advocated for free inquiry on campus and said political influences should not lead to Gay’s ouster and hurt academic freedom.  

The letter has been signed by more than 630 faculty, with one organizer telling The Hill that more have reached out Monday morning asking how to add their name.  

The calls for Gay to resign come after she was asked at a hearing if calls for genocide against Jewish people would be considered harassment on campus, responding that it would depend on context. 

“The hearing was deeply politicized and was clearly part of a strategy to discredit institutions of higher education,” the 14 Harvard faculty members who started the petition said in a statement.

The group that started the petition said they have “diverse views” on Harvard’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack against Israel and how Gay conducted herself in the hearing.  

“Yet we all agree that the University is an independent institution and outside political influences should not dictate crucial decisions about our leadership and policies. Such pressures undermine a commitment to free inquiry in our community and only inflame and further polarize the campus,” the statement reads.  

The petition began as the University of Pennsylvania’s President Liz Magill resigned over the weekend following the hearing. Magill had also faced strong pushback from donors and elected officials for refusing to answer the genocide question directly.  

A bipartisan group of more than 70 lawmakers over the weekend said the presidents of Harvard, Penn and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology should be removed from their positions following their testimonies.