“Claudine Gay was in Rome on a family vacation on Dec. 27 when Penny Pritzker, the leader of Harvard University’s governing board, called to ask: Did she think there was a path forward with her as the school’s president?”
Informative account of Gay’s resignation in the NYT.
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Dr. Gay was planning a “spring reset,” but some board members thought the plan “showed that she didn't understand the urgency of the expanding crisis.”
The first member of the Corporation to turn was Timothy R. Barakett, the treasurer.
(Others joined him, as we know, after having dinner with members of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard.)
Board members received a fresh round of input from friends, family, and acquaintances over Christmas vacation:
A Brown U. student built a website, “Bloat at Brown,” with a database of about 3,500 university staff and emailed them, asking “what tasks you performed in the past week” and “how Brown students would be impacted if your position was eliminated.”
About 20 people replied. One told him to “f**k off.”
The school advised employees not to respond and referred the student to the disciplinary office (he hasn’t been charged with any violations yet). Then his website was hacked by someone with a Brown IP address.