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In aftermath of Gay's resignation, Harvard Corp.'s leader has no intention to step down
The head of Harvard’s highest governing body, who chaired the search committee that selected Claudine Gay as the university’s most recent leader, has no plans to step aside amid some outside pressure for her removal in the wake of Gay’s resignation earlier this week.
“Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker is not resigning,” a university spokesman said in an email to WBUR Thursday. The decision, which was first reported by the Harvard Crimson Wednesday evening, means Pritzker is expected to again lead the search for a new president of the institution following Gay’s tumultuous and very brief tenure.
Gay, 53, stepped down as Harvard’s president on Tuesday after just six months in the role, a culmination of a chain of events that started with backlash to the university’s response to the Israel-Hamas war and ended with mounting allegations of plagiarism — largely consisting of inadequate citations — in her earlier academic work.
As the events unfolded this week, some high-profile Harvard donors and conservative activists who first surfaced the plagiarism instances celebrated. They urged members of the Harvard Corporation, the principal governing body, to also step down, starting with Pritzker.
The former U.S. commerce secretary in the Obama administration and a billionaire entrepreneur, Pritzker joined the Harvard Corporation in 2018 and was elected senior fellow in 2022. She also served on the Harvard Board of Overseers, another governing body, from 2002 to 2008. She earned her economics degree from Harvard in 1981.
In a statement released shortly after Gay’s resignation, the 11 members of the Harvard Corporation said the search for a new president would begin “in due course” and that it would “include broad engagement and consultation with the Harvard community.”
A committee composed of the Corporation, along with several members of the Board of Overseers, takes the lead in vetting and selecting the university president. But the Corporation also plays a key behind-the-scenes role, including helping to prepare Gay for her Dec. 5 congressional testimony to investigating the plagiarism claims to managing their prior response of support.
The 2022 search leading to Gay’s selection as Harvard’s 30th leader was the shortest in the institution’s history in nearly 70 years, according to the Crimson, with a committee reviewing more than 600 nominations in five months.
The fallout at the university over the last several months has led for calls for increased transparency and communication in the way the largely secretive Harvard Corporation conducts business and makes decisions.
