Conservatives have been demanding that Harvard President Claudine Gay step down over plagiarism allegations as well as her refusal to condemn antisemitism.

Yet in a surprising development, even some figures on the political left are now calling for Gay's resignation.

Washington Post editor says Gay's conservative critics are racist

One of them is Washington Post associate editor Ruth Marcus, who declared in an opinion piece published on Friday that Harvard's president needs to go.

Marcus wrote that Gay's "track record is unbefitting the president of the country’s premier university" while remaining in office "would send a bad signal to students about the gravity of her conduct."

Marcus was quick to insist "Gay's accusers and their allies were motivated more by conservative ideology and the desire to score points against the most elite of institutions than by any commitment to academic rigor."

The Post associate editor went on to allege "small dose of racism" on the part of Gay's detractors, asserting that they think "a Black woman couldn’t possibly be qualified to lead Harvard."

Gay's plagiarism "well beyond routine use of the same language"

However, she then declared that "instances of problematic citation in the work of Gay, a political scientist, have become too many to ignore," with some examples going "well beyond routine use of the same language."

In her 1997 doctoral dissertation, Gay used "nearly identical language" to that employed by colleagues Bradley Palmquist and D. Stephen Voss in a paper on African American voter turnout rates.

Marcus was unimpressed by the findings of a Havard inquiry focused on Gay's work, which declared that her "inadequate citations" were "regrettable" but "did not constitute research misconduct."

In response, Marcus pointed to Harvard's own student code of conduct, which states, "Taking credit for anyone else’s work is stealing, and it is unacceptable in all academic situations, whether you do it intentionally or by accident."

Gay and other college heads refuse to say if calls for genocide are allowed

Marcus is not the only liberal to lose patience with Gays, as The Atlantic contributor Graeme Wood apparently has as well.

Earlier this month, Wood took issue with Gay and other college presidents who refused to say whether calling for the genocide of Jews is permitted on campus.

During a congressional hearing, she along with the heads of America's other most prestigious schools explained that what matters is "the context" in which those calls are being made.

"At the moment she is trying to wriggle out of her error, and clinging to her job as if her dignity depended on keeping it," Wood complained.