Harvard is swarmed by billboard trucks demanding president Claudine Gay be fired as she faces mounting pressure after disastrous anti-Semitism testimony on Capitol Hill
- Harvard chief Claudine Gay told Congress calls for genocide might be allowed under college rules
- The backlash has intensified since fellow college boss Elizabeth Magill resigned from UPenn on Saturday
- Billboard vans replaying Gay’s remarks and labelled ‘FIRE GAY’ have been dispatched to Harvard’s Massachusetts campus as the pressure ramps up
The backlash against Harvard president Claudine Gay reached the gates of her college today after she insisted that calling for the genocide of Jews might not break its rules.
Two billboard trucks replaying her remarks to Congress were dispatched to the Massachusetts campus hours after fellow college chief Elizabeth Magill was forced out as president of the University of Pennsylvania.
The Harvard billboards called for Gay’s firing, just as similar ones appeared recently on the UPenn campus calling for Magill’s ouster.
The pair faced a ferocious backlash to their disastrous appearance alongside MIT President Sally Kornbluth on Tuesday where they struggled to decide whether calls for the elimination of an ethnic group constitute ‘bullying or harassment.’
Billionaire donors have threatened to withdraw funding for the elite colleges until all three are gone and campaigners behind yesterday’s stunt were confident their time is up.
‘One down, two to go,’ a source who deployed the trucks at Penn and Harvard told Fox News Digital.
Harvard President Claudine Gay at the congressional hearing on Tuesday where she said calling for the genocide of Jews does not necessarily violate the school’s code of conduct
The Harvard billboards called for Gay’s firing, just as similar ones (pictured) appeared recently on the UPenn campus calling for Magill’s ouster.
The three leaders were summoned before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Tuesday by lawmakers concerned by reports of a rise in antisemitism at leading universities.
They faced heated questioning from committee chair Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) but failed to assert that calls for genocide against Jews on campus would definitively constitute harassment.
‘This is only the very beginning of addressing the pervasive rot of antisemitism that has destroyed the most ‘prestigious’ higher education institutions in America,’ Stefanik wrote on Saturday evening.
Adding: ‘Harvard and MIT, do the right thing. The world is watching.’
Just minutes after Magill’s statement announcing her departure, the chair of the Upenn’s board of trustees, Scott Bok, also resigned.
Bok’s Vice Chair, Julie Beren Platt, has been named interim chair of the board.
In a statement issued Saturday evening Magill wrote: ‘It has been my privilege to serve as President of this remarkable institution.
‘It has been an honor to work with our faculty, students, staff, alumni, and community members to advance Penn’s vital missions.’
In his own resignation statement Bok defended Magill as a ‘good person’ who is ‘not the slightest bit anti-Semitic’ but had made a ‘misstep’ after ‘months of relentless external attacks.’
U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) calls for Harvard University President Claudine Gay’s resignation during a House Education and The Workforce Committee hearing
UPenn President Liz Magill (left) resigned on Saturday saying ‘I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate.’ MIT President Sally Kornbluth – who is Jewish – was equally condemned for her remarks. She has yet to walk them back
‘Today, following the resignation of the University of Pennsylvania’s President and related Board of Trustee meetings, I submitted my resignation as Chair of the University’s Board of Trustees, effective immediately,’ Bok said.
Gay told the Congressional committee that calls for a ‘genocide of Jews’ on Harvard’s campus would only constitute harassment ‘depending on the context.’
Stefanik pressed Gay over whether Harvard would punish students or applicants who advocate for the murder of Jews.
Gay replied: ‘That type of hateful, reckless, offensive speech is personally abhorrent to me.’
She said the university had ‘robust policies’ that hold individuals accountable when speech crosses into conduct, such as bullying, harassment or intimidation.
‘We embrace a commitment to free expression and give a wide berth to free expression even to views that are objectionable, outrageous and offensive,’ she added.
Gay apologized for her remarks on Thursday as the backlash intensified, telling college newspaper The Crimson she ‘got caught up in what had become at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures.’
‘What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community – threats to our Jewish students – have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged,’ she added.
But her seeming equivocation in the face of a surge of conflict on campus since the Hamas attack of October 7 prompted a furious riposte from Stefanik, now being relayed on the billboard van outside.
‘It does not depend on the context,’ the Congresswoman told her, ‘The answer is yes and this is why you should resign.’
Billionaire Harvard alumni Bill Ackman – who gave $26million to Harvard in 2014 – has called for the resignation of all three women.
Elon Musk agreed that it is time for their departure, and said the hearing crystalizes their liberal bias.
Harvard Hillel, the school’s leading Jewish organization, said it was ‘appalled by the need to state the obvious’.
‘President Gay’s refusal to draw a line around threatening anti-Semitic speech as a violation of Harvard’s policies is profoundly shocking given explicit provisions within the conduct code prohibiting this kind of bullying and harassment,’ a spokesman said after the hearing.
‘We are appalled by the need to state the obvious: A call for genocide against Jews is always a hateful incitement of violence.
‘President Gay’s failure to properly condemn this speech calls into question her ability to protect Jewish students on Harvard’s campus.’
The Palestine Solidarity Committee holding banners outside the prestigious college
One of the many pro-Palestine campus protests that Republicans say have labeled ‘morally reprehensible’
At the beginning of the hearing, the committee displayed a video compilation of anti-Semitic incidents on campus
Bill Ackman (left), the CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management has also spoken out and pulled his donations to his Alma mater. Les Wexner (right) pulled his foundation’s Harvard funding in protest of its response to the issue
Ackman said he was receiving calls from Harvard donors and alumni asking if the testimony was fake
There are growing calls for all three women to resign
Magill issued a groveling video statement attempting to explain her failure to condemn calls for the genocide of Jewish people on campuses.
She said she was not ‘focused’ on the issue, and said she wanted to ‘be clear’ that calls for genocide were ‘evil, plain and simple’ – although she said the blame lay with her university’s policies and the constitution, rather than with her.
Magill said: ‘There was a moment during yesterday’s Congressional hearing on antisemitism when I was asked if a call for the genocide of Jewish people on our campus would violate our policies.
‘In that moment, I was focused on our university’s long-standing policies – aligned with the U.S. Constitution – which say that speech alone is not punishable.
‘I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. It’s evil, plain and simple.’
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