The decision by the Harvard Corporation to retain President Claudine Gay was met with widespread scorn from the host of prominent politicians and commentators who had called for her ouster.

The corporation, which oversees the Ivy League university, announced the university would retain Gay as president despite a tumultuous two months, during which Gay declined to say if calling for the genocide of Jews violated the university's code of conduct at a congressional hearing. Gay has also faced accusations of plagiarism, which the corporation said did not violate "Harvard’s standards for research misconduct" despite having to correct two of Gay's past works for "inadequate citation."

HARVARD PRESIDENT CLAUDINE GAY KEEPS JOB FOLLOWING DISASTROUS TESTIMONY

The announcement from Harvard was widely criticized by those who had called for Gay's ouster, including Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who was the lawmaker whose questioning prompted the testimony from Gay that placed her fate as the leader of the school in jeopardy.

"This is a moral failure of Harvard’s leadership and higher education leadership at the highest levels," Stefanik said Tuesday. "And the only change they have made to their code of conduct, where they failed to condemn calls for genocide of the Jewish people, the only update to the code of conduct is to allow a plagiarist as the president of Harvard."

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) likewise called the decision to retain Gay "outrageous" in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

"There must be accountability for the failure to protect Jewish students on college campuses," he said.

Gay was one of three university presidents who testified at last week's hearing, and all have faced calls to resign for refusing to say that calling for the genocide of Jews violated each school's respective code of conduct. University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill resigned her position over the weekend, while the board of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology stood by its president, Sally Kornbluth, in the immediate aftermath of the hearing.

"The MIT Corporation chose Sally to be our president for her excellent academic leadership, her judgment, her integrity, her moral compass, and her ability to unite our community around MIT’s core values," board Chairman Mark Gorenberg said in a statement last week. "She has done excellent work in leading our community, including in addressing antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate, all of which we reject utterly at MIT. She has our full and unreserved support."

But pressure on Kornbluth to resign as the leader of MIT has grown in the days since the school's corporation publicly backed her.

Dozens of lawmakers from both parties signed a letter this week demanding her to resign, alongside Gay, for what they saw as her failure to stand up for Jewish students.

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Following the hearing, the House Education and Workforce Committee and its Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) announced they were launching an investigation into the educational environment and disciplinary policies of the three schools. In a statement to the Washington Examiner following the Harvard Corporation's announcement, a spokesperson for the committee said that the investigation is "bigger than three college presidents."

"Chairwoman Foxx is focused on managing a thorough and robust investigation into the policies and priorities of any university that isn’t upholding a safe learning environment for its students under the law," the spokesperson said. "The need for that is made clearer every day as disturbing allegations and incidents occur at Harvard and too many other institutions.”