Claudine Gay's Husband Is Also a Faculty Member at a Prestigious University

Due to overlapping controversies in 2023, Harvard president Claudine Gay announced on Jan. 2, 2024, that she would be resigning from her post. Claudine came under fire for what was described as lawyerly answers during a hearing on antisemitism in Congress in December, which led some on the right to resurface allegations of plagiarism from her years as an academic.

Following the news that she decided to resign, many want to better understand who Claudine is and what led the first-ever Black president of Harvard to step down less than a year into her time in the role. Is she married? Keep reading for all of the details.

Claudine's husband, Christopher Afendulis, is a senior research analyst and lecturer for Stanford University's Department of Health Research and Policy. According to his bio on the Stanford website, Christopher "is interested in the economics of health care, including the financing of the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the provision of long-term care, and the effects of managed care on the health care system."

Before taking his role at Stanford, Christopher worked as a lecturer at Harvard Medical School from 2006 to 2015. Claudine and Christopher have a son together who was born in 2006, but it isn't clear exactly how long they've been married. The couple has likely been long-distance in recent years, as Claudine has been working at Harvard and Christopher has been on the West Coast at Stanford.

On Jan. 2, 2024, Claudine announced that she would be stepping down as the president of Harvard just six months after she was appointed in July 2023.

"After consultation with members of the Corporation, it has become clear that it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual," Claudine wrote in her resignation letter.

Claudine came under fire for giving overly technical and legalistic answers to questions about antisemitism at Harvard during a Congressional hearing. Allegations of plagiarism from early in her academic career resurfaced by right-wing activists who wanted to ensure that Claudine, the first Black woman to ever be president of Harvard, also had the shortest tenure of any president in the college's history.

Claudine was being paid $900,000 as Harvard's president. Before assuming this role, Claudine served as the dean of social sciences for the faculty of arts and sciences, earning roughly $850,000 annually. Presently, Claudine holds positions as a professor of government and of African and African-American studies, though her current salary is unknown.