Inside Alan Garber’s Wild, 7-Month Interim Harvard Presidency
Alan M. Garber ’76’s first semester in Harvard’s top job would have tested even the most battle-hardened university president — and technically, he was not even the real president.
Alan M. Garber ’76’s first semester in Harvard’s top job would have tested even the most battle-hardened university president — and technically, he was not even the real president.
After former Harvard President Claudine Gay’s resigned on Jan. 2, Garber — who served for 12 years as provost in the shadows of the University’s administration — suddenly found himself in the national spotlight.
Garber inherited a media firestorm, a campus fractured over Israel’s war in Gaza, a donor exodus, federal lawsuits alleging severe and pervasive campus antisemitism, and a congressional investigation. The expectation was that he would produce results and guide Harvard out of crisis.
The 213 days that followed were an audition, and Garber delivered. A series of public and administrative victories convinced the Harvard Corporation — the University’s highest governing body — to keep Garber at the helm until June 2027, a vote of confidence in Garber and a recognition that the University is not yet in the clear.
Never a Placeholder President
Even in an interim capacity, Garber entered the presidency in January with a series of decisions before him that could not wait for Gay’s permanent successor to be appointed.
His first official policy decision was to update the University’s protest guidelines to effectively prohibit demonstrations inside University buildings or on walkways. The rules were tightened a second time in July when chalk and unapproved signs were explicitly prohibited.
Although there is still widespread disagreement about how or when these rules should be enforced, Garber’s policies gave the University grounds to restrict the activity of pro-Palestine protesters that had become a dominant force during the fall months.
On a series of other major dividing issues, Garber’s strategy for the spring was to toss the issues back to the faculty, convening four different faculty groups to hear from affiliates and develop recommendations to address antisemitism, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias, academic freedom, and institutional neutrality.
The University’s response to antisemitism lay at the heart of Gay’s disastrous Dec. 5 testimony before Congress and the task forces allowed Garber to promise action on the issues that she had been accused of mishandling while delaying new policies or statements that might reignite University critics.
While the academic freedom and institutional neutrality groups were formed later in the semester without attracting attention, Garber’s first major controversy came after naming History professor Derek J. Penslar as a co-chair of the task force on antisemitism.
Critics, including former Havard President Lawrence H. Summers, alleged that Penslar — the director of Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies — had minimized concerns around campus antisemitism. Garber stuck by Penslar, who stayed on despite the early media storm.
Harvard Business School professor Raffaella Sadun later resigned from the same task force over concerns that Garber would not implement the eventual recommendations in full. Garber never publicly acknowledged the backlash, and the task forces were able to continue listening sessions and eventually release initial recommendations in June.
In an email to Harvard affiliates announcing the recommendations, Garber wrote that the University would review and implement shorter-term items while pledging that longer-term recommendations would be considered “in due course.”
Garber’s most definitive act as interim president — committing the University to avoid taking official positions on matters of national controversy in May — was seen by a large contingent of faculty and administrators as a needed safeguard against the initial backlash Gay in early October.
It was a tangible change that demonstrated Garber’s willingness to make decisions that would outlast him despite his “interim” status. It was the kind of action he had promised.
“I am the interim president,” Garber told Harvard Magazine in February. “But the problems we need to deal with are not interim problems.”
‘The Formal Title’
When Garber took office on Jan. 2, Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny S. Pritzker ’81 told affiliates that a formal presidential search would begin “in due course.”
Then Pritzker and the Corporation went silent, providing no updates about the status of the University’s next search until a meeting with members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in late April. At the meeting, Pritzker revealed that the Corporation had formed a subcommittee to review the search process but did not disclose any details about the timeline for the appointment of the University’s 31st president.
When former Harvard President Bok was appointed interim president after Summers resigned in 2006, the search for his successor began within one semester. Likewise, in the last two presidential searches, search committees were convened within one month of the incumbent’s announced departure.
The Corporation’s silence was an implicit vote of confidence in Garber, who was free to lead Harvard on an indefinite timeline.
“I had noticed that they were not moving ahead with the search process already, and I assumed that they probably had decided to do something unusual,” said former Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine.
In his seven-month interim stint, Garber made several leadership decisions characteristic of a permanent president, including tapping Stanford University professor Jeremy M. Weinstein to serve as the dean of the Harvard Kennedy School and former Harvard Law School Dean John F. Manning ’82 to be interim provost.
Former Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow said the appointments and policy changes could not wait, but that Garber’s role will become easier ahead without the interim qualifier.
“He’s doing the job as it is now, and I think it will be easier for him to do the job and better for the institution if he has the formal title to go along with it,” Bacow said.
Garber’s Encampment Victory
Garber faced his biggest challenge in May: ending Harvard’s pro-Palestine encampment without appearing to make concessions and without using police force.
Protests had been slow to build over the course of the semester, but encampments at Columbia University and Yale University had inspired a new wave of escalation. For 20 days, Harvard’s protesters occupied the center of campus and refused to leave until Harvard divested from Israel.
Many universities dealt with protests using brute force, allowing police to evict and arrest protesters, drawing fierce condemnation from students and faculty. A small number of others, like Northwestern University, struck deals with their protesters and were promptly called before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce for testimony.
Despite rising tensions, Garber eventually brought an end to the demonstrations without police involvement or public concessions to protesters.
His preemptive decision to restrict access to Harvard Yard in anticipation of a protest allowed the University to wait the protesters out while attempting to discipline them through both the Harvard College Administrative Board and with involuntary leaves of absences.
And as Commencement barrelled closer, Garber convinced the protesters to voluntarily end their encampment by reinstating the students put on leave, offering them a meeting with a member of the Corporation, and promising to encourage the schools to discipline students “expeditiously under existing precedent and practice.”
It was a negotiation that allowed Garber to remain unmoved on the question of divestment and celebrate a peaceful ending.
Though Garber faced extensive backlash from students and faculty for the Administrative Board’s decision to later suspend five students and place more than 20 on probation, avoiding a police response was a major win in the eyes of the Harvard Corporation.
The decision widened the rift between the Corporation and the faculty, which unsuccessfully attempted to confer degrees to 13 students barred from graduating over encampment-related discipline. That anger was on full display at the Commencement Ceremony May 23, where more than 1,000 students walked out in protest.
Eleven of the degrees were quietly conferred in July after the Administrative Board reversed the suspensions and reduced the probationary periods. The exchange soured many students’ feelings toward Garber, but accepting the Faculty Council’s appeal eased tensions with affiliates.
“Alan has done an outstanding job leading Harvard through extraordinary challenges since taking on his interim presidential duties seven months ago,” Pritzker wrote in her Aug. 2 email announcing Garber’s appointment.
Three More Years of Garber
Officially Harvard’s 31st president, Garber must continue to grapple with many of the same challenges that he inherited in January.
The recommendations by three out of his four task forces and working groups are mostly unknown and unrealized. But after months of deferring to group chairs to formulate recommendations, it is now Garber’s responsibility to start taking action.
In their preliminary recommendations released in June, task force chairs suggested the University do more to support doxxed students, handle disciplinary matters consistently across Harvard schools, and make public aggregate data regarding disciplinary cases related to discrimination complaints.
Both offered a sober assessment of campus culture as well as the lack of administrative response to student concerns.
“The work ahead of us will require concerted effort,” Garber wrote in an email to affiliates, following the release of the preliminary recommendations.
“As both task forces work towards final recommendations, their preliminary recommendations offer a path forward,” he added.
The University remains under a House-wide investigation and Garber still faces a congressional subpoena from the House Committee on Education and the Workforce over Harvard’s response to antisemitism. Congressional leaders have also repeatedly suggested that Harvard’s federal funding could be at risk if it is found to have not taken adequate action.
And neither Garber nor the Corporation know how the campus pro-Palestine groups will respond in the fall.
Still, Garber’s presidency now has two things it did not have in the spring: the legitimacy of a permanent appointment, and an end date.
—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.
—Staff writer Aran Sonnad-Joshi can be reached at aran.sonnad-joshi@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @asonnadjoshi.