Congressional Battles Will Loom Over Harvard President Alan Garber’s 3-Year Term

One day before Alan M. Garber ’76 officially became Harvard’s 31st president, he was in the nation’s capital to meet with members of Congress.

The trip, which marked Garber’s third visit to Washington since he became the University’s interim president on Jan. 2, featured meetings with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Katherine M. Clark (D-Mass.).

It also underscored the importance of Garber’s role as president to mend relationships between Harvard and lawmakers. The relationship between Cambridge and Washington has been fraught for several years, but it took a sharp turn for the worse after former Harvard President Claudine Gay’s disastrous testimony about campus antisemitism.

Gay’s testimony, which contributed to her resignation less than one month later, prompted the House Committee on Education and the Workforce to open a congressional investigation into Harvard. And some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle indicated that the University should lose its federal funding if it fails to address antisemitism on its campus.

There are no signs that the pressure on Harvard will subside anytime soon.

Rep. Ronny L. Jackson (R-Texas) — who signed a letter in July alongside 26 other House Republicans that slammed the preliminary recommendations of Garber’s antisemitism task force — wrote in a statement on Sunday that Garber should prioritize “addressing and prohibiting the rampant antisemitism that was on full display last year.”

“Congress will continue doing everything we can to hold these institutions accountable if they fail to protect Jewish students from harm,” Jackson added.

University spokesperson Jason A. Newton has repeatedly stated that “Harvard has and will continue to be unequivocal — in our words and actions — that antisemitism is not and will not be tolerated on our campus.”

Harvard has made more than 20 submissions to Congress since the launch of the investigation, totalling more than 47,000 documents.

Garber, who served for 12 years as Harvard’s provost, is not unfamiliar with the University’s strained relationship with Washington.

He advised former Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow when he teamed up with MIT to sue the Trump administration over a policy that would have barred international students from attending U.S. colleges and universities offering online-only courses during the Covid-19 pandemic. And Garber sat directly behind Gay during her lengthy testimony in December.

Now comfortably in his role until June 2027, Garber will be forced to put on a brave face and walk a difficult line between serving as higher education’s chief spokesperson and keeping Harvard out of the national spotlight — a task which may become all the more challenging under a potential second Trump presidency.

Despite Harvard’s efforts to cooperate with the congressional investigation, Garber has still received criticism for not doing more to combat antisemitism on campus.

In February, Garber and two other senior Harvard officials were subpoenaed by Congress, the first time a House committee had ever issued subpoenas to a university.

And when Garber’s task forces on antisemitism and anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias — his biggest initiative to combat hate at Harvard thus far — released preliminary recommendations to the public, House Republicans blasted the suggestions as “weaker, less detailed, and less comprehensive” than those presented by Gay’s antisemitism advisory group in fall 2023.

Still, Garber has so far dodged the levels of personal criticism from members of Congress — especially Harvard’s biggest critic in Congress, Rep. Elise Stefanik — that Gay endured.

At an Institute of Politics event just two miles from Capitol Hill, Garber set a hopeful tone for Harvard’s future with political leaders, telling attendees that the University has the “extraordinary capacity to help address extraordinary challenges by connecting leaders with the resources necessary to deliberate, decide, and act.”

“The challenges we face have never been greater and, unfortunately, the challenges we face are growing in range, severity, and scope with each passing day,” Garber added.

(The event also featured a brief disruption from an activist affiliated with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — an animal rights group that has been protesting Garber at various events around the globe.)

But Garber’s appointment as the University’s permanent president could open the door to a new wave of criticism against him. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, notably left open the possibility of calling Garber to testify before Congress — an invitation Garber has said he would gladly comply with.

If he is called before Congress as a non-interim president to detail a long-term vision for combating antisemitism at Harvard, it may be the biggest test of whether he can avoid Gay’s fate and silence the University’s critics — or at least withstand their anger.

“The president of Harvard, even the interim president, does need to speak out about issues of general interest in higher ed,” Garber said in an April interview.

“I think it’s very important to defend the principles that our universities stand behind,” he added.

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

—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.