Claudine Gay's Resignation Celebrated by Black Harvard Professor–Report

A Black Harvard law professor has been accused of tweeting, then deleting, the word "Karma" in an apparent response to Claudine Gay announcing her resignation as president of the university following accusations of plagiarism and a row over campus antisemitism.

The post was allegedly made on X, formerly Twitter, by Professor Ronald Sullivan Jr., who in 2019 was effectively demoted after serving as part of Harvey Weinstein's defense team when the disgraced film producer was facing sexual assault allegations.

Political commentator Wesley Yang shared what he claimed was a screenshot of Gay's post, adding: "Ronald Sullivan deleted this one word post written in response to former Harvard president Claudine Gay's resignation: 'Karma.'"

Newsweek could not immediately verify the veracity of the screenshot's content or that the tweet was directly related to Gay's resignation.

Newsweek has reached out to Sullivan and Harvard University for comment via email.

Sullivan's decision to represent Weinstein sparked a furious response from some students, after which Harvard decided not to extend his contract as an undergraduate residence faculty dean. According to student-run newspaper The Harvard Crimson, Gay, then dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, was one of those involved in the decision.

Gay announced she was stepping down as Harvard president on January 2, with a letter in which she claimed it was "in the best interests" of the university for her to resign after facing what she described as "personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus."

It came amid an ongoing row over free speech and bigotry on campuses, which had already claimed the job of Liz Magill, who resigned as president of Pennsylvania University last month following a controversial House committee appearance alongside Gay and Sally Kornbluth, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Sullivan faced protests on campus after The New York Post first reported he had joined Weinstein's defense team in January 2019, with demonstrators demanding he step down as faculty dean and for a public apology be issued.

Weinstein was later convicted of rape and sexual assault in the New York trial and sentenced to 23 years in prison. He was subsequently sentenced to an additional 16 years in prison by a court in Los Angeles in a separate case.

In response to the controversy, Sullivan sent a 1,200-word email to students at Winthrop, then his undergraduate faculty residence, stressing the importance of representing an "unpopular defendant."

In an interview with The Harvard CrimsonGay branded Sullivan's response to the row as "insufficient," and months later it was announced his position as Winthrop faculty dean would not be renewed.

Within hours of Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in around 1,200 people killed and another 240 taken into Gaza as hostages, 34 Harvard student organizations signed a statement written by the university's Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee stating they "hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence."

The move triggered a furious response from the university's Jewish center Harvard Hillel, which said the statement promoted "hatred and antisemitism."

Appearing before a House committee in December, alongside Magill and Kornbluth, Gay was asked whether "calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard code of conduct" by Rep. Elise Stefanik.

She replied "it depends on the context," sparking outrage and calls for her to resign. Speaking to The Harvard Crimson, Gay later apologized for her remarks, and said: "Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group, are vile, they have no place at Harvard."

In December it was revealed Gay was facing an anonymous complaint of serial plagiarism, with additional allegations published by the Washington Free Beacon in January.

She initially denied any wrongdoing in response, stating: "I stand by the integrity of my scholarship." However, The New York Times reported that a Harvard investigation concluded there were cases of inadequate citation in her dissertation as well as at least two of her articles.