Claudine Gay: What Just Happened At Harvard Is Bigger Than Me Kerr Quits California Presidency
   
Claudine Gay for the New York Times News Wire Article published in the Kittanning Simpson Leader Times
January 3, 2024 March 11, 1965
    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 opport …

Read the full article here.		     The resignation of University of California President Clark Kerr who weathered stormy free speech demonstrations on the Berkeley campus last December was attributed Wednesday to a subsequent uproar over the use of a four-letter obscenity. The four-letter word was the final word in causing the resignation said California Gov Edmund G Brown. He referred to activities at Berkeley last week when nine persons were arrested for carrying the obscenity on placards or shouting it at student rallies. Kerr who had remained silent earlier also issued a statement Wednesday on his surprise resignation Tuesday from the $15000-a-year post. He chided the Berkeley faculty for failing to take part in disciplining students involved in the obscenity demonstration. Faculty committees should not seek to avoid their responsibility for assisting in discipline because of minor questions of internal jurisdiction he said. Responsibility is the other side of the coin on which freedom is written. Kerr said he announced his resignation in order to stop the destructive degradation of freedom of license on the Berkeley campus.
Harvard Couldn’T Save Both Claudine Gay And Itself Valpo president resigns job; Hits the school
   
Ross Douthat for the New York Times News Wire Article published in the Bryan Daily Eagle
January 3, 2024 April 8, 1956
    Throughout the weeks that Harvard spent resisting unsuccessfully the calls for Claudine Gay’s resignation a common line of defense of the embattled Ivy League president was that it’s essential not to hand any kind of victory under any circumstances to conservative critics of higher education. For instance a Harvard Law professor Charles Fried said that he might give “credence” to the evidence that Gay was a serial plagiarist “if it came from some other quarter.” But not he averred whe …

Read the full article here.		     ST. LOUIS April 7 — Five large universities and a medical college were censured today by the American Assn. of University Professors for violation of its Principles of academic freedom and tenure. Schools censured were the Universities of California Ohio State Oklahoma Rutgers and Temple and the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia. Censure resolutions were adopted by unanimous voice votes in the cases of Oklahoma Rutgers and Jefferson Medical. The voice votes were positive for censure against Ohio State California and Temple but a scattering of “nos” was heard. The association however noted that “substantial progress” had been shown at California Ohio State Oklahoma and Temple since the cases against them arose.
Claudine Gay’S Resignation As President Seen As Emblematic By Some Of Political Pressure On Higher Education Valpo President Resigns Job; Hits
   
Laura Meckler, Susan Svrluga And Danielle Douglas-Gabriel for the Washington Post News Wire Article published in the Bloomington Evening World
January 4, 2024 April 26, 1921
    The resignation of Claudine Gay as president of Harvard University marks the culmination of a conservative war on higher education long fought on campuses and in statehouses but this time triggered by hard questions from Republicans in Washington and their allies. The fallout raised numerous questions including how the GOP might continue to pressure universities which they charge are overwhelmingly liberal intolerant of conservative views and overly concerned with questions of race and ide …

Read the full article here.		     THE SCHOOL: Chicago, April 25.—Charging that Valparaiso University at Valparaiso, Ind., is a hotbed of Bolshevism, Com. principles. Unsigned letters have efforts of his to thwart this propa- ganda has failed because of “sinister inside influences,” Daniel Russell Hodgdon, president, today sent his resignation to the trustees. “The stream of propaganda,” declared Dr. Hodgdon today, “can be traced to the very heart of the Federal government so firmly are its protagonists intrenched.” The letter to the trustees said in part: “There has been fostered by faculty and outsiders Bolshevism, Communism, and other cults the practice of which is destructive to American ideas and principles. Unsigned letters have come mysteriously to my desk warning me against the principles I have preached; namely, loyalty to Americanism and American industrial life as the basis of American citizenship. “I have been visited by so-called ‘reds’ and foreign-born members of organizations claiming to be backed by strong influences. Such representatives undoubtedly are part of a deep-laid plan to make Valparaiso a center of radical teaching. It is possible that much of the unrest of college life today is due to these destructive outside influences aimed to destroy the basic principles upon which this government is founded.”
Harvard President Claudine Gay Resigned After A Firestorm Of Criticism. Why It Matters. New University President Bows To Protesters Quits
   
Jeanine Santucci Cybele Mayes-Osterman for the Usa Today Ry The Associated Pres: published in the Iowa City Press Citizen
January 3, 2024 February 26, 1969
    Harvard Universitys first Black president has resigned following a weekslong firestorm of criticism including backlash for how she has handled antisemitism on campus and accusations of plagiarism in her academic work. When Claudine Gay announced her resignation Tuesday her critics celebrated a major victory — another university president had left their job following a fateful congressional hearing on antisemitism. Harvard had initially stood beside Gay. Her ouster shows that public outrage c …

Read the full article here.		     William Masterson newly appointed president of Rice University became a victim of the current wave of campus unrest as he bowed today to student-faculty protesters and resigned before ever taking the post. About 1000 of the 2900 students and 200 faculty members at the Houston Tex. school massed last Saturday to protest an alleged breach of agreement by the university trustees in selecting Masterson. They charged the Rice trustees picked Masterson without consulting with a nine-member student-faculty presidential recommendation committee even though such consultation had been agreed upon. Masterson 54 told the trustees that to accept the presidency would create unnecessary dissension in view of the controversy over the method of his selection. He will continue in his present post as president of the University of Chattanooga in Tennessee. Elsewhere there were these developments: Wiley College Marshall Tex.—President T. Winston Cole ordered the 750-student Methodist Negro college closed after students barricaded buildings for the second time in 10 days. The demonstrators were demanding Cole’s resignation more Negro faculty members and cafeteria workers and restoration of intercollegiate athletics. Stillman College Tuscaloosa Ala.—The number of students locked in the union building dwindled to 25 after the administration took no drastic action to have them removed. The 800-student predominantly Negro college was closed in the face of sit-ins backing a list of demands. Pennsylvania State University University Park Pa.—About 500 students demonstrated for the second day in a row pressing demands for a greater voice in university affairs and more Negro students and professors. Rutgers University (Newark N.J.)—Officials said they would respond today to demands made by 30 Negro students who have occupied the major classroom building since Monday. Students from several other schools came to picket in support of the dissident group. Princeton University—Negro students urged support for a one-day class boycott to protest the university’s investments in companies which have business dealings with the Republic of South Africa. San Francisco State College—Teachers and students picketed peacefully while waiting for the State College Board of Regents to act on a tentative teachers’ strike settlement. Gov. Ronald Reagan said he would vote against the pact. Des Moines—About 20 University of Northern Iowa students met face to face with Iowa legislators to express concern over appropriations to UNI and a proposed antiriot bill. We haven’t rioted we haven’t struck and we haven’t stripped said one coed.