Outgoing Harvard President Lawrence Bacow Earned $1.3 Million in 2021, Financial Disclosures Show

Harvard University President Lawrence S. Bacow earned more than $1.3 million in calendar year 2021, a pay increase from the $1.1 million he made in 2020.

Bacow, who will step down at the end of June, earned a base salary of $1,021,179 in 2021, a marked pay bump from his $888,371 base salary in the previous year. Other parts of Bacow’s compensation package consisted of $244,855 in nontaxable benefits, $36,360 in deferred compensation, and $27,806 in other reportable compensation. Bacow’s nontaxable benefits include his housing at Elmwood, the Harvard president’s residence.

Harvard disclosed the earnings of its highest-paid and key administrators and faculty members in the school’s annual Form 990 tax filings on Friday, as required by the Internal Revenue Service for all tax-exempt organizations. Salaries are reported on a calendar year basis rather than a fiscal year.

Other top administrators at Harvard also received pay hikes. University Provost Alan M. Garber ’76 earned $946,159 in total compensation in 2021, up from $825,670 in 2020. Former Executive Vice President Katherine N. Lapp, who departed Harvard in the summer of 2022, made $783,839 in 2021, a slight increase over her $770,423 compensation reported for the previous year.

Harvard President-elect and Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Claudine Gay earned $879,079 in 2021, up from the $824,068 reported in 2020.

Compensation for Bacow, Garber, and Lapp in 2020 was reduced after they cut their salaries by 25 percent in April 2020 as part of University-wide efforts to reduce spending during the onset of the pandemic. Other Harvard administrators, including deans of the University’s 12 schools, were given the option to take a pay cut or contribute to a support fund for employees experiencing hardship. For some administrators, the pay cuts continued into fiscal year 2022.

Harvard’s highest-paid employee in 2021 was David J. Malan ’99, who teaches the popular introductory computer science course Computer Science 50: “Introduction to Computer Science I.” Malan earned almost $1.6 million, up from $1.4 million in 2020.

Unlike many other high-paid faculty members at Harvard, Malan’s earnings primarily come from other reportable compensation rather than from base salary. In 2021, Malan earned $1.16 million in other reportable compensation while making $389,856 in base salary.

Top executives at the Harvard Management Company, the entity responsible for managing Harvard’s $50.9 billion endowment, also received significant pay bumps and earned far more than University officials, consistent with past compensation trends. Harvard and HMC file taxes separately.

As was the case in 2020, several top HMC executives, including Chief Executive Officer N.P. “Narv” Narvekar and Chief Investment Officer Richard W. Slocum, deferred millions of their 2021 compensation to future years.

Narvekar earned $8.7 million in compensation in calendar year 2021 but deferred more than $2 million of that sum to future years, making the total compensation he was awarded $6.65 million. Narvekar’s deferral-adjusted compensation marks a sharp increase from the $6.24 million he made in 2020.

Similarly, Slocum was awarded $5.3 million in compensation in 2021 but made a total of $7 million after adjusting for deferrals, up from his 2020 earnings of roughly $5 million in deferral-adjusted compensation.

HMC Chief Operating Officer Sanjeev Daga earned a deferral-adjusted compensation total of $5.52 million, a decrease from the $6 million he earned in 2020. Daga’s 2020 compensation reflected more than $1 million in reimbursements for lost compensation resulting from his departure from Columbia University’s Investment Management Company in 2018.

At the University, other top-earning administrators in 2021 included Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development Brian K. Lee, who earned $847,878, and Vice President and General Counsel Diane E. Lopez, who earned $679,096.

Consistent with previous years, Harvard Business School Dean Srikant M. Datar and Harvard Medical School Dean George Q. Daley ’82 were the highest-paid deans across the University, earning more than $982,000 and $930,000, respectively.

Corrections: May 17, 2023

A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to Bruce L. Hay as a current Harvard Law School professor. In fact, Hay is a former HLS professor.

A previous of this article incorrectly stated that Harvard administrators’ pay cuts lasted only eight months. In fact, for some administrators, these pay cuts lasted into fiscal year 2022.

—Staff writer Krishi Kishore can be reached at krishi.kishore@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @tweetykrishi.

—Staff writer Rohan Rajeev can be reached at rohan.rajeev@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @rohanrajeev_.