Harvard University President Claudine Gay has apologized for ruling at a hearing on anti-Semitism in the US Congress that urging the genocide of Jews violates the educational institution’s rules “depending on the context.”
At last Tuesday’s session of the House Committee on Education and Labor, New York Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik asked the guest chancellors – Claudine Gay of Harvard, Sally Kornbluth of MIT and Liz Magill of UPenn – whether “Calling for the genocide of the Jews violates the policies on intimidation and harassment” of these universities.
In his response, Gay assured that it may be a violation of the university’s code of conduct “depending on the context.”
Some words that did not take long to go viral and receive criticism and condemnation from personalities and institutions, as is the case of Rabbi David Wolpe, who announced that he is resigning as a member of the advisory group on anti-Semitism of said prestigious private university in Cambridge (Massachusetts). .
“I’m sorry,” Gay responded in an interview published this Friday in The Harvard Crimson, a student publication founded in 1873 and run by Harvard undergraduates.
The rector added that “words matter” and that she regrets if hers caused “anguish and pain.”
White House Deputy Press Spokesperson Andrew Bates issued a statement last Wednesday in which he regretted that the university presidents invited to the audience did not criticize anti-Semitism more.
Magill and Kornbluth also received criticism for their interventions in that session, titled Holding University Leaders Accountable and Confronting Anti-Semitism. These reproaches also led the chancellor of the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) to retract some of her comments.