Harvard University kicked off 2024 with some big news.

Claudine Gay, the school's first black president, was stepping down.

Here's our colleague Melissa Korn.

So Harvard's president, Claudine Gay, resigned on Tuesday. She has been beset by

controversy for a good portion of the time she's been president there.

Claudine Gay's six-month tenure is the shortest of any Harvard president in history.

Gay has been heavily criticized for the school's response to protests over the Israel-Hama's war.

Harvard President, Claudine Gay has been hit with six new plagiarism charges,

bringing the total number of allegations to well over two dozen.

Gay had only held the position for six months.

And Melissa says the fact that this abrupt exit

happened at Harvard says a lot.

Harvard is in a moment of extreme turmoil

and a possible moment of self-reflection

and potentially inflection.

So you've got this school that is perhaps the best known brand in the world in terms of higher education. It is kind of held up as the epitome of liberal arts education, a research university, but it's also held up in some kind of corners of the universe as

everything wrong with higher ed, right? That it's this school that has gone

too far to the left, they're too woke.

Right, and so this is, the turmoil at Harvard is sort of a big deal because it's Harvard.

Yeah, the fact that it's Harvard means that every single thing that happens here is under more

scrutiny. Welcome to the journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm

Jessica Mendoza. It's Thursday January 4th.

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