Harvard University President Claudine Gay announced her resignation yesterday following weeks of turmoil resulting from allegations of plagiarism and controversy over her testimony in last month’s congressional hearing regarding antisemitism on college campuses. The Harvard Crimson, the school’s student newspaper, first reported the resignation.

Gay’s six-month tenure was the shortest in the university’s 388-year history. Criticism of her leadership began just a few months into her term when many, including vocal billionaire alumnus Bill Ackman, condemned her response to a controversial statement made by student groups about Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

On December 5, Gay and the presidents of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania appeared before a congressional committee to discuss the rise of antisemitism on campuses. The presidents were widely panned for their refusal to explicitly answer whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” violated their universities’ codes of conduct. Two of the three leaders are now gone: President Liz Magill of Penn resigned on December 10.

Allegations of plagiarism

Accusations of plagiarism against Gay initially came from the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative outlet, last month. Harvard then conducted an independent review, finding instances of “inadequate citation” but no research misconduct.

Gay’s supporters have criticized how Harvard’s governing body, the Harvard Corporation, handled the allegations and the backlash against Gay, although it did unanimously reaffirm its support of her presidency on December 12. In her resignation letter, Gay said she’s been subjected to racial vitriol and personal attacks. Gay was the first Black woman to serve as president of Harvard, and her backers say the campaign to oust her was politically motivated.

Big picture: The push to remove Gay has sparked a debate around the influence of wealthy donors on university decision-making. Private donations to US colleges and universities last year reached $59.5 billion, up from ~$14.8 billion in 1980–81.

Looking ahead…the House Committee on Education & the Workforce is investigating the allegations of plagiarism against Gay. Meanwhile, the Harvard board appointed Alan M. Garber, the university’s provost and chief academic officer, as interim president.—CC

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Israel kills top Hamas official in Beirut. Saleh al-Arouri, Hamas’s deputy political leader and a co-founder of its military wing, was killed in a suspected Israeli drone strike in Lebanon’s capital yesterday, Hamas confirmed. Israel has pledged to take out the Hamas leaders responsible for the Oct. 7 attack wherever they reside, and the assassination of al-Arouri (who was placed under a $5 million bounty from the US in 2015) was the first targeted strike against a Hamas official outside of Palestinian territories since the war broke out, per the Financial Times. Al-Arouri’s killing could intensify military activity along the Israel–Lebanon border, where the Israel Defense Forces and the militant group Hezbollah have been trading fire.

Two planes collided at Tokyo’s airport. A passenger plane hit a Japanese coast guard plane and burst into flames while landing at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport yesterday. All 367 passengers and 12 crew members were safely evacuated from the fiery Japan Airlines plane, but five crew members died on the coast guard aircraft, which was scheduled to deliver supplies to the area affected by a recent earthquake. Aviation accidents are rare, but the New York Times recently found that this type of collision, known as a runway incursion, is often only narrowly averted. The newspaper reviewed FAA data that showed such near misses increased by almost 25% in the last decade, although since 2018, the rate has been improving.

X’s value has plunged 71.5% since Elon Musk bought it, Fidelity says. It’s a good thing that Musk still owns several other successful companies, because Fidelity believes that the social media platform is worth a lot less than when the billionaire bought it for $44 billion in October 2022, Axios reports. That includes a decision by Fidelity, which owns a stake in X, to cut its estimate of X’s value by 10.7% in November after Musk publicly suggested that advertisers fleeing the platform over concerns about antisemitic postings “go f**k” themselves. The investment firm’s most recent valuation would put X’s value at ~$12.5 billion.

Someone get Elon to a FedEx, because he has to ship Tesla’s EV crown to China: For the first time ever, his company sold fewer EVs in a quarter than the Chinese electric car giant BYD, which claimed the top spot for Q4 2023 in all-electric sales.

Tesla still beat expectations with a record quarter (and the 1.8 million EVs it sold in 2023 were the most worldwide for the full year), but it’s now racing bumper-to-bumper with its ascendant overseas rival.

BYD goes pedal to the floor

The Warren Buffett-backed battery manufacturer turned automaker scaled quickly, partly due to its ability to mass-produce its own batteries.

• BYD sold 526,000 all-electric vehicles in the last three months of 2023, compared with Tesla’s 484,500. 
• The company grew its EV sales by 73% year over year, delivering 1.57 million vehicles and selling roughly as many plug-in hybrids, according to Nikkei.

Though BYD still makes nine out of every 10 of its sales within China, its international deliveries grew more than 3x in 2023. And it’s threatening to pass auto titans Volkswagen and Renault in their own lane with plans for its first European EV plant in Hungary.

But there are speed bumps…BYD faces the possibility that Europe will raise tariffs on Chinese electric cars. The EU is also investigating China’s massive subsidies for its EV-makers, which it claims might be artificially lowering prices.—SK

Hollywood is built on pretending to do things. So you won’t be shocked to hear that’s exactly what researchers say it’s doing when it comes to encouraging diversity.

Traditional US film studios have made little progress on their promise to hire more women and people of color to direct movies, two separate reports released this week found. Despite the historic $1.4 billion success of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, USC Annenberg’s Inclusion Initiative found that…

• Only 14 of the 116 directors (~12%) of the 100 highest-grossing films of 2023 were women.
• Just four (3.4%) were women of color.

The report skewered Hollywood’s attempt to improve representation as “performative.” Another report from San Diego State University found that for the 250 top-earning movies of 2023, the results are even more dire: Just 16% of those directors were women, down from 18% in 2022.

Big picture: In the wake of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, Hollywood studios said they’d reevaluate their hiring practices and vowed to make the talent in front of and behind the camera look more like the audiences watching. The industry made some strides—a separate USC study found that the percentage of Asian characters in speaking roles has meaningfully increased, for instance—but critics argue it’s not doing enough.

The caveat: The reports don’t include directors working for streaming services, which typically have better representation than traditional studios. In 2021, nearly 27% of the directors Netflix hired were women.—AE

Stat: Heeding the advice of an I Think You Should Leave sketch closely, billionaire Warren Buffett did a lot of giving in 2023. The Berkshire Hathaway co-founder donated 1.5 million shares of company stock—worth $541 million—to his Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, which primarily backs women’s reproductive health. That was the biggest act of charity of the year, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual rankings. The second biggest donation came from hedge fund manager James Simons and his wife, Marilyn, who gave $500 million to SUNY Stony Brook. Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, also made the list with a $400 million pledge to revive a historically Black neighborhood in Portland, Oregon.

Quote: “I’m flabbergasted!”

If that was your reaction after opening a Halloween-themed Reese’s treat to find it wasn’t as cute as its packaging suggested, then there’s a class-action lawsuit in Florida for you. The suit alleges that, in order to boost sales, the Hershey-owned brand advertised that its chocolates contained festive designs like smiling jack-o’-lanterns, but in reality, many of the candies were tragically undecorated. The lawsuit quotes scores of unhappy eaters who took to YouTube to express their shock. Hershey joins Burger King, Taco Bell, and other big food brands in getting sued for alleged false advertising in recent years.

Read: How Australia’s Bluey conquered children’s entertainment. (Financial Times)

Read: Healthcare Brew’s new series on the future of hospitals.

Watch: It’s hard to know what floor you’re really on in the Chinese city of Chongqing.

Bail: Readers discuss the optimal time to give up on a book you’re not enjoying.

Grow: Join Morning Brew and YouTube growth consultant Jamie Rawsthorne for a two-day workshop starting Jan. 20 on how to rocket your YouTube channel to new heights.

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