Claudine Gay facts for kids

Claudine Gay (born 1970) is an American political scientist and academic administrator who was the 30th president of Harvard University, and is the Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African-American Studies. Gay's research addresses American political behavior, including voter turnout and politics of race and identity.

On assuming office in 2023, she became Harvard's first black president. Prior to that, she served as the Dean of Social Studies, and then the Edgerley Family Dean of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

After the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, Gay faced criticism, including from former Harvard President Lawrence Summers, for failing to adequately condemn the attacks. On January 2, 2024, Gay resigned from the presidency, with Alan Garber becoming Harvard's interim president.

Early life and education

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

Gay attended Phillips Exeter Academy, a private boarding school in Exeter, New Hampshire, graduating in 1988. She attended Princeton University for one year before transferring to Stanford University, where she studied economics, graduating in 1992. She received the Anna Laura Myers Prize for the best undergraduate thesis in economics. Gay earned her Ph.D. in 1998 from Harvard, where she won the university's Toppan Prize for the best dissertation in political science.

Academic career

After graduating, Gay was an assistant professor, and later tenured associate professor, in Stanford University's Department of Political Science from 2000 to 2006. In the 2003–2004 academic year, she was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Gay's research addresses American political behavior, including voter turnout, housing policy, and the politics of race and identity. She was recruited by Harvard to be a professor of government in 2006, and was appointed professor of African American studies in 2007.

Administrative positions

In 2015, Gay was named the Dean of Social Studies at the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and the Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African-American Studies. In 2018, she was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

As Dean of FAS, which oversees graduate and undergraduate studies, she 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.

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 and was a trustee of Phillips Exeter from 2017 to 2023.

Harvard presidency

In June 2022, Harvard President Lawrence Bacow announced that he would resign 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. On December 15, 2022, Harvard announced that Gay had been selected as the 30th president of Harvard University. She took office on July 1, 2023, becoming the university's first Black president.

On January 2, 2024, The Harvard Crimson, Harvard's student newspaper, reported that Gay would resign her position later that day. In an email to affiliates, Gay announced her resignation: "It is with a heavy heart but a deep love for Harvard that I write to share that I will be stepping down as president." She further stated, "it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor – two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am—and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus." Alan Garber, the provost of Harvard, became interim president.

Personal life

Gay is married to Christopher Afendulis, an information systems analyst at Stanford University's Department of Health Research and Policy. They have a son who was born in 2006.

See also

In Spanish: Claudine Gay para niños