It looked like, unlike former University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, Claudine Gay, the President of Harvard University, was going to survive in her job. But she’s gone, gone, gone! From The Harvard Crimson:

Harvard President Claudine Gay resigns, shortest tenure in university history

By Emma H. Haidar and Cam E. Kettles, Crimson Staff Writers | Tuesday, January 2, 2024 |  12;57 PM EST

Harvard President Claudine Gay will resign Tuesday afternoon, bringing an end to the shortest presidency in the University’s history, according to a person with knowledge of the decision.

I’ve got to put the rest of this below the fold, because I simply had to embed Queen’s “Another one bites the dust!” Read on, because it isn’t only Dr Gay who has bitten the dust today!

It is not clear who will be appointed to serve as interim president.

University spokesperson Jonathan L. Swain declined to comment on Gay’s decision to step down.

Gay’s resignation — just six months and two days into the presidency — comes amid growing allegations of plagiarism and lasting doubts over her ability to respond to antisemitism on campus after her disastrous congressional testimony Dec. 5.

Gay weathered scandal after scandal over her brief tenure, facing national backlash for her administration’s response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and allegations of plagiarism in her scholarly work.

It’s interesting that it took two scandals, her handling of anti-Semitism on campus and reports of plagiarism in her ‘scholarly’ work. The Wall Street Journal has more:

Harvard President Resigns After Plagiarism Allegations, Campus Antisemitism Backlash

Claudine Gay faced calls to step down as governing board stood by her

By Melissa Korn | Tuesday, January 2, 2024 | 1:35 PM EST

Harvard University President Claudine Gay has resigned after facing mounting criticism over how she responded to antisemitism on campus and, most recently, allegations that she plagiarized the work of other researchers on several occasions.

Gay, a professor of government and of African and African-American studies, became president in July after serving as dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences for around five years. She had been under pressure for weeks regarding her response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. Her remarks at a House committee hearing on the matter in early December drew widespread criticism after she gave an equivocal response to a question about whether calls for the genocide of Jewish people violated the campus code of conduct.

She was also accused of plagiarizing other academics in several published papers and her Ph.D. dissertation. The Harvard Corporation, the university’s top governing board, said in December that reviews of her work uncovered some instances of “inadequate citation,” but that the omissions didn’t meet the bar of outright research misconduct.

Gay has requested four corrections on two academic papers and is updating her dissertation in three spots, according to the school, whose board has released statements standing by Gay.

Some said Harvard had been holding Gay to a standard different from the one that its own students are supposed to meet and called into question Gay’s contributions to her field and her integrity as a researcher.

While Dr Gay is out of her job as university President, she’s still a tenured professor. Saleh al-Arouri is also out of a job, but I do not believe he will get another:

Top Hamas Leader Killed in Suspected Israeli Strike in Beirut

Saleh al-Arouri was a founder of the Hamas military wing and one of its top political leaders

By Dion Nissenbaum, Adam Chamseddine and Benoit Faucon | Tuesday, January 2, 2024 | 1:03 PM EST

Saleh al-Arouri, scrreenshot from YouTube, by The Times of Israel.

A top Hamas leader was killed Tuesday by a suspected Israeli strike in Beirut, according to two Lebanese security officials, raising the specter of further escalation in Israel’s war against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

The blast killed Saleh al-Arouri, a founder of the Hamas military wing and one of its top political leaders, and at least three other people, the officials said. Hamas confirmed Arouri’s death in a statement. The Israeli military declined to comment on the explosion.

Israel’s leaders have vowed to go after all Hamas leaders around the world involved in the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that it said killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and Tuesday’s attack appeared to be the first deadly result of the campaign outside the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s Army Radio attributed the strike to Israel, and Danny Danon, an Israeli lawmaker who served as the country’s ambassador to the United Nations, praised his military and spy agency for carrying out the attack.

It looks like the second day of 2024 has been a good one so far!