Academics support Harvard president in row over hearing into antisemitism

At least 570 professors at Harvard have defended the university's embattled president, Claudine Gay, as she faced calls to resign following statements on campus antisemitism that have already triggered the resignation of the University of Pennsylvania president.

The faculty submitted a petition to the 13-member Harvard Corporation, which has the authority to fire the president, asking it not to bend to political pressure to remove her.

Appearing before a congressional inquiry last week, Gay, along with Sally Kornbluth, the president of MIT, and Liz Magill, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, answered more than five hours of questions over their response to antisemitism on their campuses.

Frequent student protests over the Israel-Gaza conflict have triggered accusations that some of the rhetoric has crossed into antisemitism.

Gay, Kornbluth and Magill all declined to provide a definitive "yes" or "no" answer to the Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik's question about whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their university's code of conduct.

More than 70 US lawmakers signed a letter demanding all three university presidents be removed in response. Magill resigned, as did the University of Pennsylvania's chairman of the board of trustees.