John Goldberg To Stay On as Harvard Law School Dean

Updated June 30, 2025, at 2:37 a.m.

John C.P. Goldberg, who has served as the interim dean of Harvard Law School since March 2024, will become the school’s permanent dean, the University announced Monday.

Goldberg’s appointment to the role comes more than a year after his predecessor John Manning ’82 was promoted to interim University provost, leaving the top job at Harvard Law School open. Now, Goldberg takes his permanent place in the University’s upper ranks as it faces a historic struggle with the Trump administration.

Goldberg has been the leading contender for the position after serving in the interim deanship. A scholar of tort law, Goldberg has steered the Law School through a turbulent year — marked by the Trump administration’s attacks on Harvard and the legal profession, student anger over the war in Gaza, and the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to ban race-based affirmative action.

The University’s decision to retain Goldberg as Law School dean continues Harvard’s trend of keeping its temporary leaders on, sans the “interim” tag, as the school faces intense political pressure and recovers from turnover in Massachusetts Hall. In August last year, Manning became permanent provost, two weeks after University President Alan M. Garber ’76 lost his interim title to become Harvard’s 31st chief.

Over the past year and a half, starting with Garber and Manning, Harvard has also primarily drawn its new top leadership from within its own ranks. The Harvard Graduate School of Education likewise appointed a longtime faculty member as interim dean, then kept her on permanently. And Harvard College’s new dean, Harvard Kennedy School professor David J. Deming, was also an internal pick.

A pick within the Law School didn’t surprise most faculty members — a leader from outside Harvard’s ranks hasn’t been selected to lead the school since 1910.

“Throughout our search process, we sought a leader who could navigate today’s complex landscape and continue to build on the Law School’s academic strengths and impact,” Garber wrote in a press release in the Harvard Gazette, a University-run publication.

“He has an unwavering belief in excellence and inclusion, and the essential role that academic freedom plays in nurturing both of those aims,” Garber added.

During Goldberg’s term so far, the Law School administration has been embroiled in a battle with student activists over protest spaces on campus. Last fall, students and faculty held silent demonstrations in the Law School library against Israel’s war in Gaza and were met with two-week bans from the library. The bans drew consternation from the student government, which attempted to hold a referendum condemning the library bans — only to see the effort fizzle out after administrative opposition.

Goldberg also formed a committee — the “Haas Lounge Advisory Group” — to review the use of a student lounge, often known as Belinda Hall in honor of a woman enslaved by a prominent HLS donor family, which has been a historic site for student protests.

Most recently, the Law School has been targeted by the Trump administration over allegations of race-based discrimination at the Harvard Law Review, a student-run publication. After hundreds of documents were leaked to the Washington Free Beacon — a conservative news publication — three federal agencies launched investigations into both Harvard and the Law Review, claiming that the Law Review discriminated based on race in the selection of its members and articles.

Though the Law Review is run as an independent nonprofit by students, the HLS dean sits on its board as an ex officio member, and its building is on the HLS campus. Goldberg and other University administrators have stayed quiet on the controversy — a stance that the now-dean has taken on most debates throughout his tenure so far.

His leadership has drawn praise from faculty, who noted how Goldberg stepped up to the plate in a time of instability at Harvard.

“John stepped up in the middle of a crisis when Harvard and HLS were under enormous pressure, and he was not afraid to risk his personal capital to help the institution,” HLS professor Jody Freeman wrote in a March statement to The Crimson.

Jared A. Ellias — an HLS professor and member of the dean search committee — wrote in a statement that among an “incredible” group of candidates, “John’s virtues were obvious.”

“He’s a fantastic scholar who is among the most influential in his field of study, an elite teacher of the law and someone whose administrative chops had been refined in the cauldron of the past year,” Ellias added.

Annette Gordon-Reed, another HLS professor who served on the committee, wrote that the leadership announcement was a “wonderful appointment” and that Goldberg is both a “great person and a great scholar.”

Students have been more noncommittal on his tenure. Though Goldberg’s office has emphasized that he has met frequently with both faculty and students, some students have said they do not know precisely what role he has played in protest restrictions and battles with the student government. Controversial student life decisions have generally been handed down by the Dean of Students office or in unsigned emails, not under Goldberg’s name.

Before being named interim dean, Goldberg has taught as a professor at HLS since 2008, and briefly served as one of the school’s three deputy deans from 2017 to 2022.

Goldberg previously attended Wesleyan University, and then New York University School of Law, where he served as the editor in chief of the NYU Law Review. He briefly worked as an associate at Hill and Barlow — a Boston-area firm — before joining Vanderbilt University Law School’s faculty in 1995. Goldberg specializes in tort law, and is one of the most-cited scholars in the field.

“I am deeply grateful for this opportunity to serve the students, faculty, staff, and graduates of Harvard Law School, particularly at a moment in which law and legal education are so salient,” Goldberg said in the press release.

—Staff writer Caroline G. Hennigan can be reached at caroline.hennigan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @cghennigan.