On Tuesday, I made the wrenching but necessary decision to resign as Harvard’s president. For weeks, both I and the institution to which I’ve devoted my professional life have been under attack. My character and intelligence have been impugned. My commitment to fighting antisemitism has been questioned. My inbox has been flooded with invective, including death threats. I’ve been called the N-word more times than I care to count.

My hope is that by stepping down I will deny demagogues the opportunity to further weaponize my presidency in their campaign to undermine the ideals animating Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness, independence, truth.

As I depart, I must offer a few words of warning. The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader. This was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society. Campaigns of this kind often start with attacks on education and expertise, because these are the tools that best equip communities to see through propaganda. But such campaigns don’t end there. Trusted institutions of all types — from public health agencies to news organizations — will continue to fall victim to coordinated attempts to undermine their legitimacy and ruin their leaders’ credibility. For the opportunists driving cynicism about our institutions, no single victory or toppled leader exhausts their zeal.

[Examples of plagiarism were found in about half of her published work. That’s not excellence. Harvard sent its lawyers to threaten a newspaper that considered publishing the story. That’s not openness. The school then violated its own guidelines to do a rush “investigation” that cleared her, rounding up friendly academics who would go on record saying they weren’t bothered she had borrowed their words without citation. That’s not independence. And now she’s refusing to admit the allegations were serious even though an undergrad recently wrote in the Harvard Crimson that any student caught doing what she had done (40+ instances in 7-8 papers) would be suspended for a year. That’s not the truth. Gay talks a good game but she’s out because she’s become an embarrassment to those within the school, not a victim of cynics outside it. – John]