Hundreds of Harvard faculty have signed a letter backing the university’s president after her testimony at a congressional hearing on the rise of campus anti-Semitism ignited pressure for her to resign, a US newspaper reported, according to AFP.

The letter backing Claudine Gay, which was reported on by the Boston Globe, came after her counterpart at another Ivy League university stepped down on Saturday in the face of withering criticism and political pressure over their appearance at Tuesday’s hearing.

The letter and the hearing both come as a rise in hate attacks and offensive rhetoric targeting Jews and Muslims since the eruption of the current conflict in Gaza fuels a debate on the boundaries of free speech in the United States.

The letter warns that political bids to remove Gay are “at odds with Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom,” according to the Globe, and calls on administrators to “defend the independence of the university.”

Gay, University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sally Kornbluth gave long, legalistic answers when asked whether students who call for the “genocide of Jews” on their campuses violate codes of student conduct.