Alan M. Garber ’76 comes into the Harvard presidency armed with a stacked resume: three degrees from Harvard and one from Stanford, time on both faculties, and more than a decade serving as Harvard’s second-highest administrator.

It might just be enough to spare him from the condemnation that befell former Harvard President Claudine Gay, whose last weeks in the presidency were marked by scrutiny of her academic scholarship and allegations of plagiarism.

Before being thrown into a chaotic interim presidency, Garber was the longest-serving provost in Harvard’s history, serving as the University’s chief academic officer for 12 years.

Alongside extensive administrative experience, Garber boasts a remarkable academic record: He is an acclaimed physician, a renowned professor in both economics and medicine, and a prolific researcher cited by thousands.

“His academic credentials are impeccable,” said Thomas D. Parker ’64, a senior associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy.

‘Even-Handed, Balanced, Unflappable’

With his expertise in medicine, Garber brings a long-missing academic background back to Massachusetts Hall.

He is the first University president to have an academic background in the sciences since James B. Conant, Class of 1914, a former Crimson editor and Harvard Chemistry professor who helmed the University from 1933 to 1953.

As an undergraduate student at Harvard College, Garber studied economics, despite initially being interested in concentrating in biology. He remained in Cambridge for nearly a decade, receiving both masters and doctoral degrees in economics from Harvard.

While pursuing his Ph.D. in economics, Garber enrolled in medical school at Stanford University. Since then, he has hopped from coast to coast, completing his medical training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital before being appointed to professorships in economics, medicine, and health policy at Stanford.

“I would describe him as a social scientist — an elite social scientist — and an excellent clinician all wrapped up into one,” said Dana P. Goldman, a professor of Health Economics at the University of Southern California, for whom Garber was a thesis advisor and mentor.

In total, Garber has authored over 150 academic papers and garnered almost 20,000 citations. The breadth of his scholarship dwarfs that of Gay, who published fewer than a dozen articles since completing her dissertation.

Garber began his academic career mainly focused on researching heart disease and antibiotic resistance. But in the late ’90s, his scholarship shifted towards blending his health care expertise with his economics background.

“He was considered by many people as the best health economist of his generation,” Stanford professor and Garber’s former colleague Douglas K. Owens said.

Garber is considered a pioneer in cost-effectiveness analysis, specifically with regards to how the assessment of medical technology can impact health care spending.

While in the past physicians would continue providing care until there was no more benefit — “do no harm was kind of where we stopped,” Goldman said — Garber’s research established that there should be limitations.

“What Alan’s research has been about is saying there are costs to doing that. And we don’t have unlimited resources,” Goldman added.

While Garber was at Stanford, he was “often turned to by university leadership” because “he cared about institutions,” according to John W. Rowe, a professor of health policy at Columbia who worked closely with Garber when they were at Stanford.

Rowe added that when Garber served on search committees for faculty at Stanford, he was known to be skilled at evaluating potential hires, an asset he brings along to the Harvard presidency.

“He’s got terrific judgment about people. He really can assess individuals and identify talent,” said Rowe.

Richard P. Chait, a higher education expert and professor emeritus at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said that Garber’s experience in higher education at and outside of Harvard equips him to lead.

“Over the years, Harvard has been well served by presidents who maybe have not had their whole careers at Harvard, but have that first hand experience with the institution,” Chait said.

“He has a deserved reputation as an even-handed, balanced, unflappable individual,” he said.

In 2011, Garber returned to Cambridge after almost 25 years at Stanford to become Harvard’s fourth provost, as well as holding professorships at Harvard’s Medical School, Kennedy School, School of Public Health, and in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Crossing the Aisles

Garber’s background as both a scientific researcher and a Harvard alum uniquely positions him to understand the University’s culture.

“His most impressive credential is that he’s a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard College,” Parker said.

In the Class of 1976's Freshman Register from Harvard University, University President Alan M. Garber '76 is pictured, left, stating his interest to study Biology. In the Class of 1976's Yearbook, Garber is pictured, right, stating his concentration in Economics. By Courtesy of Alan M. Garber '76

Roy Y. Chan, a professor at Lee University who studies higher education, echoed Parker’s sentiment, saying that Garber’s student experience allows him to “understand the culture” and “challenges that are facing the institution.”

“Because he did his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree at Harvard, I think he does have not just political leverage but also some experience understanding students,” Chan added.

Rowe said that at Stanford, Garber “was exceptional at fostering young scholars” and “really enjoys nurturing young people.”

Garber’s background in science could allow him to connect with an even greater part of Harvard’s campus than the traditional social science background of many previous Harvard presidents.

Increasingly, university presidents hail from a STEM field, according to Chan.

“They hire them because one, they not only produce good research, but two, they have proven themselves academically to lead the institution to a prestigious level in terms of getting millions of dollars of research funding from philanthropic foundations and corporations,” he added.

Reporting in publications focused on higher education suggests that university presidents with a background in the sciences experiment more with their leadership.

Harvard’s last president from the sciences, Conant, was regarded as transformative for promoting a more diversified student body, allowing women more opportunities for education, and adopting standardized testing for admission.

Since assuming the presidency, Garber has launched inaugural task forces to address antisemitism and Islamophobia and adopted a policy of institutional restraint.

Garber’s background in medicine may also allow him to better interface with the Longwood campus than past presidents.

“He’s now president of a university that has a vast medical school with 8,000 faculty, and all these huge hospitals, and he understands the practice of medicine,” said Rowe. “That is a noteworthy characteristic.”

Science has also become a kind of lingua franca in academia, according to a number of HMS professors who voiced support for a president with a STEM background.

In March, HMS Dean George Q. Daley ’82 endorsed Garber for a similar reason — that the prominence of technology makes scientific expertise increasingly relevant.

Garber’s ability to cross the aisles of academic disciplines within the environment of Harvard is an asset for his leadership.

“He could interact in all those communities and with all those people,” Goldman said. “And you’d have lawyers and economists and physicians and business people and ethicists all in the same room talking about the same issues.”

“It’s very unusual to have an individual with this kind of multi-dimensional breadth,” Rowe said. “It’s going to serve us very well.”

‘A Harder Target’

Garber’s impressive academic background may come under less criticism than Gay experienced during her tenure, according to several experts on higher education.

“This is a very difficult time to be a university president. There seems as if there will always be some segment of the population, some constituency that's disgruntled about some issue,” said Chait.

Having served as interim president, Garber has already faced intense scrutiny from the public and Congress — and has emerged largely unscathed.

“The fact that he’s been there for such a long time as provost means that he’s a harder target,” Parker said.

“People like Virginia Foxx, if they had been able to go after him, they would have already,” he added, referring to the chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce that has been investigating antisemitism on campus.

Garber’s personal background may also diminish the risk of attacks on his academic record. Over the past year, conservative activists such as Christopher F. Rufo have attacked Harvard’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and targeted plagiarism accusations against Black female scholars at Harvard.

While Chan acknowledged that Garber and Gay’s very different backgrounds makes comparing them difficult, he did say it was “possible that he may not receive as much criticism as Gay would.”

“Of course, we know that — you know — one is a woman, one is a man. One is white, one is Black,” he added.

Chan added that, given the explosive controversy surrounding the alleged plagiarism in Gay’s work, Garber and his academic publications will have been more scrutinized by Harvard to avoid a repeat debacle.

“The hope is that he’s pretty bulletproof,” said Parker.

—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.

—Staff writer Saketh Sundar can be reached at saketh.sundar@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @saketh_sundar.