Claudine Gay will remain as president of Harvard despite a backlash over her comments on anti-Semitic student protests, the university announced on Tuesday.

In a statement, Harvard Corporation, one of its two governing bodies, said Ms Gay was “the right leader to help our community heal” and that it would “unanimously stand in support of her”.

The 53-year-old academic, who is the first black person to hold the post of Harvard president, came under fire last week after testifying to Congress that calls for the genocide of Jews may only be considered against the university’s bullying and harassment policy “depending on the context”.

Amid calls by more than 70 members of Congress for her resignation, Ms Gay apologised for her remarks, admitting that “words matter” and she had “failed to convey what is [her] truth”.

Similar comments from Liz Magill, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, resulted in her resignation on Saturday, amid pressure from donors who said they would withdraw their funding if she remained in post.

Ms Gay’s comments have led to fierce debate within Harvard’s academic community, with some signing open letters and petitions calling for her removal and others expressing support.

The Harvard Corporation on Tuesday pointed to Ms Gay’s apology and her announcement that she was “committed to redoubling the university’s fight against anti-Semitism”.

‘Accusations of plagiarism’

It also said that an investigation had been launched into her academic work, following accusations of plagiarism in a 1997 dissertation that appeared to have lifted phrases from other scholars without quotation marks.

“At President Gay’s request, the Fellows promptly initiated an independent review by distinguished political scientists and conducted a review of her published work,” the statement said.

“On December 9, the Fellows reviewed the results, which revealed a few instances of inadequate citation.

“While the analysis found no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct, President Gay is proactively requesting four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications.”

‘One down, two to go’

The statement is likely to be met with further criticism from congressional Republicans, who said that Ms Magill’s resignation was “one down, two to go”.

The two women appeared alongside Sally Kornbluth, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on Dec 5, and refused to answer a “yes or no” question from Republican Elise Stefanik on whether calls for genocide would constitute bullying and harassment.

“What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community – threats to our Jewish students – have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged,” Ms Gay later said.

She added that she had been “caught up in what had become at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures”.