Jim Malatras, the chancellor of the State University of New York, said he would resign after text messages showed he had belittled a woman who later accused Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment.

Jim Malatras, the chancellor of the State University of New York, submitted his resignation on Thursday following intense political pressure for him to step down over text messages that showed him belittling one of the women who had accused former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of sexual harassment.

His resignation, which goes into effect on Jan. 14, marked a spectacular fall for yet another of Mr. Cuomo’s allies amid the multiple scandals that led to the former governor’s resignation in August.

Mr. Malatras faced bipartisan backlash and mounting criticism over the past two weeks after Letitia James, the state attorney general, released new evidence from her office’s investigation into Mr. Cuomo.

The new materials included text messages from May 2019 between Mr. Malatras and top Cuomo officials disparaging Lindsey Boylan, a former economic development official who 18 months later accused Mr. Cuomo of sexual harassment.

At the time, Ms. Boylan, who left the Cuomo administration on acrimonious terms, had criticized the governor’s office’s paid family leave policies on Twitter, setting off a clash between Mr. Malatras and Ms. Boylan on the social media platform.

The public feud spilled over into a private text chain among members of Cuomo’s inner circle. In one text to the group, Mr. Malatras wrote, “Malatras to Boylan:,” followed by an obscenity. In another text message, Mr. Malatras wrote, “Let’s release some of her cray emails!” Cray is slang for crazy.

The messages, released in late November, prompted an outcry from the governing bodies representing the system’s students and faculty, as well as from a growing group of state legislators, who called on the university’s board of trustees to remove Mr. Malatras.

He had apologized for the text messages last week, saying: “My words were inappropriate, disrespectful and wrong.”

Mr. Malatras, who received a $450,000 salary plus a $60,000-a-year housing allowance, became the first SUNY graduate to be named chancellor. He nonetheless drew scrutiny for his lack of academic leadership compared to past chancellors, many of whom had presided over large universities before taking over SUNY.

Mr. Malatras began working as a policy adviser to Mr. Cuomo in 2007 when Mr. Cuomo was state attorney general, later serving as the former governor’s director of state operations, a top role tasked with overseeing the state’s day-to-day operations.

Mr. Malatras was part of a group of trusted advisers that Mr. Cuomo temporarily recruited to lead the state’s coronavirus response in early 2020, turning him into a fixture during Mr. Cuomo’s daily coronavirus briefings. (When introducing him, Mr. Cuomo would frequently poke fun at Mr. Malatras, who holds a Ph.D in political science, saying he was “not a real doctor.”)

Mr. Malatras, for example, was one of the Cuomo advisers who substantially rewrote the now-infamous report from the Health Department that obscured the true extent of deaths in nursing homes during the pandemic. The version of the report Mr. Malatras edited, however, did not downplay the death toll; that was done by other aides later in the process.

He also helped edit and fact check the book on leadership that Mr. Cuomo wrote during the pandemic, earning the former governor more than $5 million. A recent investigation by the State Assembly found that some Cuomo staffers had worked on the book during government hours, but Mr. Malatras has said he took time off on the work days he volunteered.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/nyregion/suny-chancellor-malatras-resigns.html?