Claudine Gay: Difference between revisions

Claudine Gay (born August 4, 1970)^[1] is an American political scientist serving as the 30th president of Harvard University. Assuming office in 2023, she became the university's first black president 368 years after its founding.^[2]

Prior to becoming the university's president, she served as the Edgerley Family Dean of Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African-American Studies.^[3] Gay's research addresses American political behavior, including voter turnout and politics of race and identity.

Gay grew up the child of Haitian immigrants who came to the United States over fifty years ago and met in New York City as students. Her mother studied nursing and her father studied engineering.^[4] Gay spent much of her childhood first in New York City, and then in Saudi Arabia, where her father worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,^[5] while her mother was a registered nurse.^[5] Gay is a cousin of writer Roxane Gay.^[4]

Gay attended Phillips Exeter Academy, a private boarding school in Exeter, New Hampshire,^[6] and then attended Stanford University, where she studied economics. She received the Anna Laura Myers Prize for best undergraduate thesis in economics and graduated in 1992.^[5] Gay then earned her Ph.D. in 1998 from Harvard University, where she won the university's Toppan Prize for the best dissertation in political science.^[7]

After graduating, Gay served as assistant professor, then tenured associate professor in Stanford University's Department of Political Science from 2000 to 2006. In the 2003-2004 academic year, Gay was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.^[5]

Subsequently, Gay was recruited to Harvard to be a professor of government in 2006 and additionally appointed professor of African American studies in 2007.^[3] In 2015, she was simultaneously named the Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African-American Studies and Dean of Social Studies at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Three years later, in 2018, she was appointed to become the Edgerley Family Dean of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

As Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), which is responsible for both graduate and undergraduate studies, Gay outlined four priorities: increasing diversity among faculty, increasing interdisciplinary studies among students, encouraging collaboration among professors, and fostering faculty involvement in the university's community.^[8] During this time, the university had to deal with educational and financial disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic. For fiscal year 2020, the FAS reported losses of $15.8 million.^[9] In 2021, Gay announced that the cost of the FAS's core academic commitments were greater than its revenues and began processes to reduce expenses including a freeze on faculty bonuses and salary increases and a freeze on faculty searches.^[8] In 2021, FAS reported a surplus of $51 million, a dramatic increase from the projected deficit of $112 million.^[10] The surplus was part of a larger $238 million university wide surplus for fiscal year 2021.^[11]

In 2019, Harvard Law Professor and Faculty Dean of Winthrop House, Ronald Sullivan, faced scrutiny by students and school administrators, including Gay, for joining the legal defense team for Harvey Weinstein, who at the time was on trial for rape, while serving as dean.^[12] Gay believed that the role of a residential dean came with "an expectation of a special responsibility to the well-being of the students" and found Sullivan's justification for defending a unpopular defendant "insufficient."^[13] In May 2019, the college announced that Sullivan and his wife, who were the university's first black faculty deans, would not have their faculty dean contracts renewed. The decision was controversial and was denounced by the American Civil Liberties Union, saying the university "could have used the incident as a teachable moment about the importance of criminal defense in our society as well as about the importance of tolerance on a campus of higher learning."^[14] The university controversially announced that the decision to not renew Sullivan's contract was due to performance and morale conditions in Winthrop House.^[15] However, the ACLU concluded that "from all appearances, it was Sullivan’s representation of Weinstein, not his performance as dean, that prompted his dismissal."^[14] Sullivan publicly accused Gay and Dean Rakesh Khurana of misleading the university and the public as to their reasonings for his dismissal.^[16]

In June 2022, Harvard President Larry Bacow announced he would be resigning from the post in one year. A search committee, led by Penny Pritzker, Senior Fellow at the Harvard Corporation, considered 600 nominees and selected Gay to succeed Bacow in one of the shortest presidential search committees in the university's history. On December 15, 2022, Harvard University announced that Gay had been selected as the 30th president of Harvard University where she would serve as the university's first black president.^[17][18] She officially took over the role on July 1, 2023.^[19]

In addition to her time at Harvard and Stanford, Gay served as a vice president of the Midwest Political Science Association from 2014 to 2017^[20] and as a trustee of Phillips Exeter Academy since 2017.^[6]

Following Hamas's 2023 terrorist attack on Israel, Gay was criticized by many individuals, including former Harvard President Larry Summers,^[21][22] for failing to adequately condemn the attacks. Testifying before U.S. Congress on December 5, 2023, Gay refused to state that calling for the genocide of Jews would violate Harvard's policies on bullying or harassment, stating that it “depends on the context.” ^[23]

• 1998: "Doubly Bound: The Impact of Gender and Race on the Politics of Black Women", Political Psychology, co-authored with Katherine Tate
• 2001: "The Effect of Black Congressional Representation on Political Participation", American Political Science Review
• 2001: The Effect of Minority Districts and Minority Representation on Political Participation in California, Public Policy Institute of California
• 2002: "Spirals of Trust? The Effect of Descriptive Representation on the Relationship Between Citizens and Their Government", American Journal of Political Science
• 2004: "Putting Race in Context: Identifying the Environmental Determinants of Black Racial Attitudes", American Political Science Review
• 2006: "Seeing Difference: The Effect of Economic Disparity on Black Attitudes Toward Latinos", American Journal of Political Science
• 2007: "Legislating Without Constraints: The Effect of Minority Districting on Legislators' Responsiveness to Constituency Preferences", The Journal of Politics
• 2012: "Moving to Opportunity: The Political Effects of a Housing Mobility Experiment", Urban Affairs Review
• 2013: Outsiders No More? Models of Immigrant Political Incorporation, Oxford University Press, co-editor with Jacqueline Chattopadhyay, Jennifer Hochschild, and Michael Jones-Correa
• 2014: "Knowledge Matters: Policy Cross-pressures and Black Partisanship", Political Behavior

• Biography at Harvard University website