Moral 'failures' of academic leaders wouldn't have seen accountability if not for Congress: Stefanik
House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., responded Tuesday to Harvard President Claudine Gay's resignation, telling Fox News the "failure of leadership" by Gay and now-former University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill would not have been met with accountability if not for Congress.
Stefanik's stern questioning last month of Magill, Gay and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth on the subject of virulent antisemitism on campus has been credited for leading to the resignations of Magill and Gay, who stepped down Tuesday.
Stefanik told "America Reports" all three women offered "morally bankrupt" testimony in response to what she called an extremely simple question – whether calling for Jewish genocide violates academic codes of conduct at each institution.
Each collegiate leader offered a different version of "it depends on the context," Stefanik recounted, saying that as a Harvard graduate herself, she recognized Gay's failure of leadership from the start.
HARVARD PRESIDENT CLAUDINE GAY RESIGNS
"We have seen… from Claudine Gay a failure of moral leadership, but also a failure of academic integrity, which is a cornerstone of any higher education institution," she said. "So I called for her resignation as I did for all three [presidents] because of their abject failure in that congressional testimony and their failure to protect Jewish students."
"This is long overdue. It should not have taken the Harvard Corporation Board this long to demand her resignation."
She said members of Harvard's corporation are also "complicit" in covering up Gay's reported repeated plagiarism; separate from her controversial House testimony – connecting the sudden scrutiny of her past written works with the fallout from her disastrous hearing performance.
HARVARD PRESIDENT CLAUDINE GAY FACES SIX NEW PLAGIARISM CHARGES: REPORT
"You have to remember, she was selected as president of Harvard in a shorter executive search than any other previous president. And they should have found out that there were 50 credible allegations of plagiarism and the fact that the Harvard Corporation, we now know, knew about that before the congressional hearing and tried to cover it up and threatened media outlets to sue them is a disgrace," Stefanik added.
"When you are a board of any university, you need to make sure that your president, your faculty and your students uphold the rigors of academic integrity…"
"So this accountability would not have happened were it not for the very clear moral questions at the hearing."
In her resignation letter, Gay said it has been "distressing" to have people doubt her commitment to confronting hate and "upholding scholarly rigor," claiming she has been since subjected to "threats fueled by racial animus."
Prominent Harvard alumni Alan Dershowitz and billionaire hedgefunder Bill Ackman have been noted critics of Gay in the time since her testimony to Stefanik.
Dershowitz offered repeated criticism on Fox News, while Ackman was notably vociferous on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Gay did have a few defenders following her resignation, including Al Sharpton. The MSNBC host reportedly wrote that his organization plans to picket outside Ackman's offices, according to CNN.
In regard to Harvard's future, Stefanik said the college should prove it will have a new direction of leadership protecting Jewish students facing threats and assaults.
"This congressional investigation is not going to stop because of the resignation of these university presidents. There are deep institutional rots in these formerly prestigious universities, whether it's their DEI offices or whether it's the antisemitism that we see raging on college campuses," she said.