She Had To Resign After Major Ivy League Scandal. Now She’s Teaching Students About Leadership.

Former Harvard University President Claudine Gay is set to teach multiple courses at the Ivy League school in the upcoming academic year, including a class on university “preservation and governance,” nearly three years after multiple scandals led to her resignation in early 2024.

For the fall semester, Gay will teach GOV 94HE: “What is a University?: Purpose and Politics in Higher Education,” the Harvard Crimson reported. The class goes over the history of higher education in the United States and addresses modern-day arguments on “curriculum, admissions, research, preservation, and governance.”

According to the description, “A central goal of the course is to encourage Harvard students to engage in critical thinking about their own institution and to understand the background political, social, and market pressures that influence their college experience.” Gay’s short stint as Harvard’s president could also become a topic of discussion in the class, which looks at “Harvard-specific cases, histories and examples” to study debates in higher education.

Gay resigned in early 2024 in the wake of a plagiarism scandal and after she was blasted over Harvard’s response to anti-Israel protests on campus following Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. Gay was accused of plagiarizing numerous passages in at least eight of her 17 published works.

Even before the plagiarism accusations surfaced, many questioned Gay’s ability to lead America’s oldest university. After anti-Israel demonstrations popped up at colleges across the country in late 2023, Gay testified before Congress on what Harvard leaders were doing to address the growing problem and protect Jewish students. In a viral exchange with Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Gay was asked if calling for the genocide of Jews violated Harvard’s code of conduct against bullying and harassment.

“It can be, depending on the context,” Gay replied, saying the statement would have to be “targeted at an individual” to violate Harvard rules.

Gay was criticized for her response to Stefanik’s simple question by people across the political spectrum, including Harvard faculty members and alumni. Shortly after her testimony, Gay apologized for how she answered the question, saying, “Words matter. When words amplify distress and pain, I don’t know how you could feel anything but regret.”

Gay resigned just a month after her testimony, becoming the shortest-serving president in Harvard’s history. She faced more criticism when she stepped down for claiming in her resignation letter that she was “subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.”

Despite her plagiarism scandal and the embarrassing end to her leadership post, Harvard kept Gay on as a professor and even assigned her to teach a course on “reading and research,” the College Fix reported. The Fix noted that Gay is set to teach that course again in the 2026-2027 school year.

Gay is also set to teach GOV 94GC: “African American Politics” and GOV 2576: “Politics of Race, Ethnicity and Immigration” in the upcoming academic year, according to the Harvard Crimson.