“Harvard University paid former president Claudine Gay over $1.5 million in 2024 after her resignation amid plagiarism and antisemitism scandals,” reports The College Fix.
This amount is more than the $1.3 million she made the previous year, when she was Harvard’s president.
Gay was forced to resign after most of her meager published work turned out to contain plagiarism. The Washington Free Beacon reported that there were “dozens” of instances of plagiarism in Gay’s academic work. One scholar noted that there were “50 pretty clear-to-the-eye examples of plagiarism which would have gotten students kicked out, including ones that at least two original authors feel was academic plagiarism.”
Harvard’s current president, Alan Garber, earned more than $1.6 million in 2024. In 2026, though, Garber voluntarily took a 25% pay cut. “Several other” Harvard “administrators and faculty members also received seven-figure compensation packages,” notes The Harvard Crimson.
Claudine Gay “resigned as president in January 2024 over plagiarism allegations and intense criticism over her response to campus antisemitism. Despite facing plagiarism allegations in nearly half of her published works and widespread criticism for her apathetic congressional testimony on antisemitism, Gay never lost her tenured position….she returned to the faculty as a professor of Government and of African and African American Studies,” notes The Fix.
Gay will teach classes in the future titled “racial domination and contestation” and “African American Politics.”
Some colleges pay their officials a lot. The Center Square reported that some “universities that receive government funding pay some of their top leaders millions of dollars and one even received a $20 million longevity bonus.” “Amy Gutmann, the former President of University of Pennsylvania, received nearly $23 million in 2022, including a $20 million deferred compensation payout after 18 years. Current UPenn President Larry Jameson earned over $5 million in a recent year.”
