President Garber, Follow Your Own Policy

Five months ago, Harvard announced that the University and its leaders would refrain from weighing in on public controversies. Did anyone bother to tell University President Alan M. Garber ’76?

Last week, when asked in an interview with The Crimson about a controversial post from the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, Garber said “Although I don’t agree with the statement — in fact, there are aspects of it that I personally find offensive — I am not about to make University statements about matters of public affairs that are not part of the core of the University.”

These remarks, however brief, fly in the face of Harvard’s newly adopted institutional voice principles.

Garber should have kept quiet. No matter what qualifications precede them, the University President’s on-the-record statements are easily interpreted as the view of Harvard as a whole.

Don’t take our word for it. Harvard’s policy guidance itself states that “the higher the rank of a University leader, the more likely it is that others will tend to conflate the statements of that leader with those of the institution, whether or not those statements include an explicit disclaimer that the leader is speaking in an unofficial capacity.”

As Harvard's most influential figure, the University President bears the heaviest burden to exercise restraint when speaking publicly; only those matters most central to University functions warrant a public stance.

This Instagram post — no matter how obviously offensive — clearly fails to meet that standard.

Sure, Garber’s misstep was brief — a fraction of a sentence plucked from a full-length interview. But an experienced University administrator should understand that even a few ill-placed words are enough to fill a headline.

Garber has inherited the University at a moment of profound crisis, when academic freedom is under threat. He has the potential to serve as the historic changemaker Harvard needs, setting our University back on the course of open inquiry. His comments last week were tragic — not just because they violated Harvard’s own rules, but because they constituted a backsliding in Garber’s noble efforts to achieve a neutral Harvard.

In the time span of a mere matter of months, Garber has spearheaded an effort to shore up academic freedom at our University, taking steps to promote intellectual vitality, agreeing to review Harvard’s anti-discrimination policies to ensure faculty speech is not chilled, and adopting a classroom non-attribution policy to promote free conversation in the classroom.

A key part of these reforms are Harvard’s new institutional voice policies, which prohibit the University and its officials from wading into political debates. This critical safeguard for open inquiry ensures that orthodoxies handed down by administrators don’t crowd out constructive dialogue.

But, for the most part, these policies are still just words on a webpage. Their successful implementation depends upon precedents set by senior officials like Garber — which is precisely why his recent statement is so concerning.

As the University encounters gray areas and weighs whether public statements are worthwhile, they ought to err on the side of silence. Setting an example is incredibly important given Harvard’s decision to include academic centers and mid-level administrators in their policies on the school’s institutional voice.

Garber will inevitably face many tough interviews in the coming years of his presidency. Thankfully, he now has a University policy explaining why he cannot respond. All Garber needs now is the courage to be silent.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.