Former Harvard President Claudine Gay has said she received emailed death threats and was called the “N-word” countless times prior to resigning after her congressional testimony on anti-Semitism and plagiarism allegations, Reuters reports.

Gay made the comments in a New York Times opinion piece on Wednesday, a day after she yielded to pressure from Harvard’s Jewish community and members of Congress to step down over the Dec 5 congressional hearing and allegations about her academic work.

“My character and intelligence have been impugned. My commitment to fighting anti-Semitism has been questioned. My inbox has been flooded with invective, including death threats. I’ve been called the N-word more times than I care to count,” Gay said in the 870-word piece titled “What Just Happened at Harvard Is Bigger Than Me”.

Gay, former University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth testified before a US House of Representatives committee on Dec 5 about an alleged rise in anti-Semitism on college campuses after Israel attacked Gaza in response to Hamas’ Oct 7 strike on Israel.

The three said it depended on the context when asked by US Republican Representative Elise Stefanik whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their universities’ codes of conduct regarding bullying and harassment. More than 70 US lawmakers demanded the universities fire the presidents over the response, which they judged unacceptable. Magill resigned on Dec 9.