Former Harvard President Claudine Gay is returning to the classroom nearly three years after resigning amid plagiarism allegations and fallout from a congressional antisemitism hearing, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. This time, she will teach a course about Harvard itself.
Gay stepped down on January 2, 2024, capping a six-month tenure that stands as the shortest in the university’s history. Her resignation followed a widely criticized appearance before Congress, mounting concerns about antisemitism on campus, and dozens of plagiarism allegations unearthed across her academic work.
Now, according to the Harvard Crimson, she is scheduled to teach three courses during the 2026-2027 academic year. The arrangement marks a striking turn for a figure who has largely stayed out of public view since leaving the president’s office.
A Course That Turns the Lens on Harvard
Gay’s fall class, GOV 94HE — titled “What is a University?: Purpose and Politics in Higher Education” — will chart the development of American higher education before turning to present-day battles over curriculum, admissions, research, preservation, and governance. The course description says students will examine the political, social, and market pressures that shape their college experience, with a stated goal of encouraging “critical thinking about their own institution.”
The course is a selective tutorial capped at 16 students. It is expected to culminate in a final project in which students propose “a vision for institutional reform or reinvention” — an assignment that, given Gay’s own turbulent experience running the university, carries an unusual resonance.
In the spring 2027 semester, Gay will teach two additional courses: GOV 94GC, “African American Politics,” and GOV 2576, “Politics of Race, Ethnicity and Immigration.”
The African American Politics tutorial begins with the 1965 Voting Rights Act and examines the opportunities and limits that have shaped Black political life since, assessing the extent of Black influence on the political process. The doctoral seminar on race, ethnicity, and immigration — which Gay will co-teach with professor Jennifer L. Hochschild — explores what the course description calls “racial domination and contestation” from the country’s founding to the present, with attention to the racial and ethnic dimensions of elections and governance.
Despite her years in Harvard’s administration, Gay has never held a teaching role at the university, according to the source material. Before becoming president, she served as dean of Social Sciences and as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Plagiarism Allegations Still Loom Over the Return
The plagiarism controversy that helped end Gay’s presidency has not faded from the discussion. Breitbart News reported extensively on the allegations, including a Boston Globe op-ed that questioned Harvard’s handling of the matter.
“The statement seems contradictory. If Gay didn’t violate any standards of research, why would she need to correct anything?” the Globe asked, according to Breitbart’s account.
The Globe noted that Harvard’s own standards appear to classify Gay’s “inadequate citation” as plagiarism. Harvard’s website, under “What Constitutes Plagiarism?”, states that drawing any idea or language from another source without adequately crediting it is considered plagiarism.
Yet elsewhere, Harvard allows for a looser standard, noting that a finding of research misconduct requires the conduct to have been committed “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly.” To the Boston Globe, those conflicting policies are troubling.
Gay’s return to teaching comes as elite universities continue to face scrutiny over admissions, free expression, and governance. Whether her course becomes a genuine case study in institutional self-examination — or a source of renewed controversy — may depend on how the university and its students receive a former president whose tenure ended in disgrace even as she now asks students to scrutinize the institution she once led.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2026/09/23/former-harvard-president-claudine-gay-returns-from-plagiarism-scandal-to-teach-class/