(Bloomberg) -- Harvard University will keep Alan Garber as its president until mid-2027, giving him three more years in the job after he took over as interim leader when Claudine Gay resigned in January.
A “full-scale search for his eventual successor” will start in the late spring or early summer of 2026, Harvard said in a statement Friday. Garber, a 69-year-old physician and economist, had previously served as university provost at the oldest and richest US college.
Garber became interim president as student protests sparked by the Israel-Hamas war roiled campuses nationwide. Gay and the president of the University of Pennsylvania resigned after giving disastrous testimony before Congress last year about antisemitism on their campuses, and Harvard still faces probes on the subject from two congressional committees. Major donors including alumni Ken Griffin and Len Blavatnik have said they’re pausing gifts to the school.
“Alan has done an outstanding job leading Harvard through extraordinary challenges since taking on his interim presidential duties seven months ago,” Penny Pritzker, who leads Harvard Corp., said in the statement.
“We have asked him to hold the title of president, not just interim president, both to recognize his distinguished service to the university and to underscore our belief that this is a time not merely for steady stewardship but for active, engaged leadership,” she said.
In a separate statement, Garber vowed to focus on “rededicating ourselves to academic excellence” and the ways in which Harvard’s teaching and research can benefit the broader society.
“That excellence is made possible by the free exchange of ideas, open inquiry, creativity, empathy, and constructive dialogue among people with diverse backgrounds and views,” he said. “This is a challenging time, one of strong passions and strained bonds among us.”
The plan to keep Garber another three years drew praise from such quarters as Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, a Harvard alum who called him a “steady leader for the community,” and Larry Summers, a former president of the university.
Summers, a paid contributor to Bloomberg Television, said Garber would “promote intellectual diversity and resist academic antisemitism” while promoting academic excellence. He was an early critic of how Gay handled rising antisemitism on campus.
Managing a range of constituencies — students, alumni, faculty members, donors — comes with the job of university president, but the role has been particularly complex since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Student protesters have slammed Israel for its retaliatory offensive in Gaza, which has killed almost 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and fighters. Hamas is designated a terrorist group by the US and European Union.
At Harvard, protesters took over part of Harvard Yard earlier this year and remained in a tense standoff with Garber and the university until shortly before graduation ceremonies. Echoing their counterparts at colleges from New York to California, they called on their school to divest from Israel and US weapons makers. Harvard said it wouldn’t discuss divestment.
Policy Changes
Garber has already announced several policy changes, including a return to requiring standardized tests for undergraduate admissions and a commitment to institutional neutrality on matters that don’t directly affect the university’s core function. This week, Harvard unveiled a new essay question for applicants asking how they have handled disagreements with others.
Harvard isn’t the only Ivy League school now relying on temporary leaders amid campus turmoil. Earlier this year, Cornell University’s president abruptly said she’d be stepping down. The school’s provost was appointed to take the top job for two years.
The University of Pennsylvania named its longtime medical school dean to serve as interim president until as long as mid-2026 following the resignation of Elizabeth Magill.
Garber, who grew up in Rock Island, Illinois, graduated from Harvard College in 1976. He went on to earn a medical degree from Stanford and a doctorate in economics from Harvard.
After teaching at Stanford, Garber came to Harvard as provost in 2011. He served as provost for three Harvard presidents, Gay, Lawrence Bacow and Drew Faust, who held the job from 2007 to 2018 and had the longest tenure of a recent leader. Garber studies methods for improving productivity and financing in health care, and sits on the board of Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc.
--With assistance from Bill Haubert.
(Updates with Healey, Summers comments in eighth paragraph.)
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
