Claudia Gay is a heavily educated woman. She has earned her bachelor’s in economics from Stanford. She has her Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University.  Because of her accomplishments, she earned the role of Harvard University’s 30th president. Not only is she the president at one of the top Universities in the world, but she is also the first black president and the second female president in the university’s 383 years. So, she exceeded the standard of any other American and has achieved more than many would want in her lifetime. 

But, She has recently resigned from her position as president. Harvard is allowing her to maintain tenure at the university. Her resignation was fueled by the great tension on campus from the Israel and Palestine conflict that has divided many other colleges in the country like the University of Pennsylvania and M.I.T., which caused multiple plagiarism allegations to surface about her. The allegations were that she plagiarized her Ph.D. thesis. This resulted in the Harvard community and spectators questioning why she was still president. They argued that the president should be held to the same standards as the students when it comes to academic dishonesty. So, she resigned because she thought it was in the “best interest” of the Harvard community. 

However, if the allegations are true and she did plagiarize, it is still completely uncommon for her to resign. This raised the question of whether it is a coincidence that the first black president is also one of two of the only presidents to resign or was motivated by the great amount of pressure she has been dealing with that is only due to her race. Most of the presidents before her held their positions and were not bullied out by a community that did not support them.

It’s possible that she could have resigned because she was guilty and it was her way of staying out of trouble like Nixon did with Watergate. That is likely not the case though. There is a big chance she would still be president if she wasn’t an African American woman.