‘Keeper of the Keys’: Meet the Secretary of Harvard’s Secretive Governing Boards
Marc L. Goodheart ’81 is the most powerful person at Harvard no one has ever heard of.
Marc L. Goodheart ’81 is the most powerful person at Harvard no one has ever heard of.
The immensely private, gray-haired man has served as a top adviser to Harvard’s secretive governing boards and the architect of its ultra-confidential presidential search processes for parts of four decades.
As Harvard faces its most challenging period in decades, Goodheart — unlike interim President Alan M. Garber ’76 and Senior Fellow Penny S. Pritzker ’81 — has not had to publicly answer for the controversy. But to the extent that Harvard has been in a leadership crisis, that crisis is as much Goodheart’s responsibility as anyone’s.
His role at Harvard is all-encompassing. Goodheart is a vice president and secretary of the University, chief administrative officer of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers — the two governing boards — and an adviser to the president as a member of his senior staff.
In short, he is “the keeper of the keys,” said Nannerl O. Keohane, a former Corporation member.
‘He Guards Everything’
At the highest and most secretive levels of Harvard governance, Goodheart has his hand in everything. When the Corporation and Board of Overseers meet in Loeb House, they are joined by Goodheart, who both crafts meeting agendas and is responsible for meeting minutes — the same documents that are now being subpoenaed by a congressional committee.
He also serves as the chief administrative organizer during the University’s presidential searches, playing a key role in the selections of Lawrence H. Summers, Drew Gilpin Faust, Lawrence S. Bacow, and Claudine Gay.
Over the last few months, Harvard’s governance has been picked apart, with national publications taking an interest in the inner workings and membership of the Corporation.
The interest has only grown greater with the House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s investigation into Harvard, which has the potential to reveal the minutes of the governing boards’ meetings.
While the committee might not know it, a significant number of the internal documents it is now demanding that Harvard produce by March 4 could have been written by Goodheart.
“He guards everything,” Keohane said. “He’s in charge of the documents and he’s ultimately responsible for them.”
Putting him in the rarefied company of the president and the treasurer, Goodheart sits in on both Corporation and Board of Overseer meetings.
In crafting the meeting agendas, he is also responsible for coordinating with the faculty deans of Harvard’s schools when they present updates from their schools to the Corporation annually.
Jeffrey S. Flier, former dean of Harvard Medical School, said his first interaction with Goodheart as dean was over email, when Goodheart set up his meeting with the Corporation and requested Flier’s presentation to the board be sent for review a few weeks in advance.
A few days later, Goodheart sent back a modified presentation, with slides removed or wording changed, according to Flier.
“This was supposed to be my presentation to the Corporation,” Flier said. “Why or how could he take it upon himself to change some of the details?”
Flier said that the scope of Goodheart’s influence within Harvard governance remained unclear to him.
“I didn’t know whether he was purely a scheduling functionary or someone deeply important to the conduct of the Corporation,” he said. “It could have been anything in between.”
“Nobody described his role to me in a way that would allow me to understand that,” he added.
An unwritten part of Goodheart’s job description is also to stay out of the spotlight.
The last time The Crimson wrote extensively about Goodheart was in 2000, just two years after he became secretary of the governing boards. It was the last time any news outlet wrote about Goodheart.
Goodheart didn’t speak to reporters then, and he wouldn’t for this article.
‘The Right Kind of Person’
Former Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine brought Goodheart back to the University in 1992, and tasked him with bridging the gap between the Corporation and the Board of Overseers as an assistant to the president.
“When we met, I immediately felt that he was exactly the right kind of person we needed,” Rudenstine said.
Rudenstine said a key problem was establishing a unique role for the Overseers within Harvard’s governance.
Rudenstine said that the Corporation was essentially the University’s sole decision-making body, a role that “was difficult for some Overseers to accept.”
While Goodheart would never admit to playing a key part in expanding the role of the Overseers to include oversight of academic programs, Rudenstine said, “he helped out, no question, articulating that conception.”
After Rudenstine’s retirement, Goodheart has served under six other Harvard presidents — including two interim leaders — over 32 years: Summers, Derek C. Bok, Faust, Bacow, Gay, and Garber.
He has served within the highest echelons of Harvard’s governance for decades even as University presidents, provosts, Corporation members, and Overseers have come and gone — acting as an adviser and confidant to each of them.
Gettysburg College President Robert W. Iuliano, who served as the University’s general counsel from 2003 to 2019, said that Goodheart “remembers everything.”
“He helps us see not only the issue before us, but he can situate it into a much broader tableau of institutional values and traditions and prior decisions,” Iuliano said.
Patricia S. Bellinger ’83 — Bacow’s chief of staff at Harvard — said Goodheart is referred to as the “institutional historian” of the University.
“We joke that he must have been around a century ago, such is his dominion of Harvard’s history,” she wrote.
But Goodheart has also helped create a lot of Harvard history over his three-decade tenure serving as a secretary to the governing boards.
The Corporation underwent a series of structural reforms in the wake of Summers’ resignation in 2006, shepherded the University through the Covid-19 pandemic, and is now facing the fallout of a monthslong leadership crisis that ended with Gay’s sudden resignation on Jan. 2.
“Marc is an institutional treasure,” said Paul L. Choi ’86, a former president of the Board of Overseers. “Particularly during times of challenge, we are fortunate to have him in service to the University.”
‘Discreet’
Former administrators and members of the governing boards all use the same handful of adjectives to describe Goodheart — witty, intelligent, and incredibly loyal to the institution.
“If you happen to be the secretary to the board, the temptation to put yourself forward and to try to be more influential than you might be or should be, it could be great,” Rudenstine said. “In Marc’s case, it’s zero.”
Bellinger wrote that Goodheart “would have been a great spy.”
“But if you want to get him to spill, you just draw him out about his family,” she added. “He can’t help it.”
One former member of the Board of Overseers described Goodheart as “too brilliant to not have an opinion” on agenda items, though he always had an “artful way of not appearing to reflect any personal bias.”
Another said that Goodheart would avoid speaking in Overseers meetings, “religiously so.”
Keohane, who served on the Corporation from 2005 to 2017, said that Goodheart’s personality is a mix between journalist and lawyer.
Goodheart was president of the Harvard Independent as an undergraduate, a reporter for the Miami Herald, and worked for several years as a lawyer after graduating from Harvard Law School.
“Journalists, of course, are in the business of trying to ferret things out and reveal them and make them all open. And lawyers are in the business of trying to show only part of the truth when they need to do it in order to support a case,” Keohane said.
“It’s almost as if you got two different personae coming together in an impeccably successful person in supporting the Corporation and being an assistant to the president,” she added.
Goodheart plays an important role in crafting institutional messaging and the University’s institutional prose is often his.
But he is also the force behind the witty introductions for honorary degree recipients at Commencement.
Bacow called Goodheart “one of the best writers I know” in an emailed statement.
Choi recalled that at the Board of Overseers’ farewell dinner for Bacow, Goodheart transformed the song “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” into a “hilarious and touching rendition about Larry’s life and work at Harvard.”
‘Ultimate Institutional Loyalist’
Goodheart’s job — like many in Harvard’s central administration — got a lot harder after Oct. 7.
Even for a seasoned institutionalist, acting as an adviser to a president under fire while also serving as the chief administrative officer to the very board that could — and ultimately did — lose confidence in the president is a tall order.
Summers wrote in a statement that Goodheart is the “ultimate institutional loyalist” who has had a “profound influence shaping 21st century Harvard.”
But as the governing boards search for Harvard’s 31st president, Goodheart’s role is only going to get harder and more essential for the University.
Garber wrote in a statement that he has worked closely with Goodheart since he returned to Harvard to serve as provost.
“He is a valued colleague whose wise and insightful advice helps us to advance the values and mission of the institution,” Garber added. “I am deeply grateful for his dedicated and diligent work supporting the Governing Boards and the Office of the President.”
As Harvard looks to recover from a crisis and transition to a new president, Goodheart’s wealth of knowledge will be of paramount importance to ensure a smooth transition.
His work, however, will occur out of sight from most Harvard affiliates.
“He relishes working discreetly behind the scenes for the good of the institution and despises the limelight,” Bellinger wrote.
“He will be very displeased that I have given you any intel whatsoever, but he deserves recognition (once a decade or so is about all he can tolerate),” she added.
—Staff writer Emma H. Haidar can be reached at emma.haidar@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @HaidarEmma.
—Staff writer Cam E. Kettles can be reached at cam.kettles@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @cam_kettles or on Threads @camkettles.