Former President Barack Obama secretly lobbied on behalf of embattled Harvard President Claudine Gay’s amid the antisemitism scandals that have rocked the Ivy League university, according to a report by Fox News.
Obama, who graduated Harvard’s law school in 1991, privately lobbied the university’s leadership to stand by Gay as she faces pressure to resign for failing to properly address antisemitism on campus, according to a report by Fox News.
Harvard president Claudine Gay addresses an audience during commencement ceremonies, Thursday, May 25, 2023, on the schools campus, in Cambridge, Mass. Harvard has announced that Gay is to succeed Harvard University Lawrence Bacow, and is to become its new president beginning July 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Moreover, the former president reportedly lobbied Harvard officials even after her December 5 testimony before the House Education and Workforce Committee, where she declined to say whether advocating for the genocide of Jews is permissible on campus.
“It sounded like people were being asked to close ranks to keep the broader administration stable — including its composition,” a source said of Obama’s clandestine involvement.
It remains unclear, however, if the 44th president continued his efforts after Gay’s Ph.D. dissertation was called into question over multiple instances of alleged plagiarism.
“I stand by the integrity of my scholarship. Throughout my career, I have worked to ensure my scholarship adheres to the highest academic standards,” Gay told the Boston Globe a few weeks ago in response to the plagiarism allegations.
But on last week, fresh plagiarism allegations were unearthed in an official academic complaint against Gay when Harvard’s Research Integrity Office received a complaint featuring more than 40 alleged instances of plagiarism.
The klieg lights have been on the Harvard president since the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, to which the school’s leadership failed to properly respond after more than 30 of its student groups signed a pro-terror statement blaming Israel for the attack against itself.
After initially remaining silent, Harvard issued a vague, generic statement, in which the Ivy League university failed to counter or even mention its student groups in question. After nationwide backlash, Gay issued a follow-up statement trying to distance the school from the students who signed the pro-terror statement.
To make matters worse — and for some, laughable — Harvard then issued a third statement lecturing the public about the importance of free speech, despite ironically being named 2023’s worst school for free speech by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).
After that, Gay, along with the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania President and MIT, delivered a disastrous testimony before congress regarding antisemitism on their campuses. University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill ended up resigning shortly after the hearing.
Then, Gay’s own Ph.D. dissertation was called into question, with scholar Carol Swain, whose work was cited in the Harvard president’s dissertation, telling Breitbart News that the Harvard president Gay “is a fraud” and “an embarrassment,” who “should resign.”
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