Alan Garber ’76 is Harvard’s 31st President, Search for Successor to Begin in 2026

Updated August 2, 2024, at 8:10 p.m.

Alan M. Garber ’76 will serve as Harvard’s 31st president, the school announced on Friday, rewarding the longtime provost-turned-interim president for his efforts to steer the University through its most tumultuous period in decades.

The Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers — the University’s governing boards — voted earlier on Friday to appoint Garber as Harvard’s next leader, a role he will hold until the end of the 2026-27 academic year. Senior Fellow Penny S. Pritzker ’81 announced that the University will delay the launch of a formal search for Harvard’s 32nd president until 2026.

The decision to strip Garber’s interim title appears to have been made by the governing boards without a formal search process to consider other candidates for the role. Unlike most other presidential searches, the University did not form faculty, staff, and student advisory committees. Instead, Corporation members opted to quietly consult with a select group of faculty members last month before making the appointment.

The announcement comes exactly seven months after former Harvard President Claudine Gay suddenly resigned on Jan. 2, after mounting allegations of plagiarism and unrelenting criticism her efforts to combat antisemitism on campus ended her presidency after just one semester.

Garber, second-in-command to three Harvard presidents during his 12-year stint as provost, was thrust into the top job to contend with the University’s worst leadership crisis in decades, a donor exodus, a congressional investigation, and a deeply divided campus over Israel’s war in Gaza.

“We have asked him to hold the title of president, not just interim president, both to recognize his distinguished service to the University and to underscore our belief that this is a time not merely for steady stewardship but for active, engaged leadership,” Pritzker wrote in an email announcing the appointment.

The University did not indicate whether interim Provost John F. Manning ’82, who Garber appointed in March, will permanently remain in his role for the rest of Garber’s presidency.

During his one semester as interim president, Garber has sought to heal a fractured student body, even as he was hit with a congressional subpoena and contended with large-scale pro-Palestine protests that threatened to further destabilize Harvard’s campus.

But it was Garber’s deft handling of the converging crises facing the University, including the 20-day pro-Palestine encampment in Harvard Yard — which ended peacefully, without a police response, and in time for Commencement to proceed as planned — that helped convinced the Corporation to strip the interim tag, according to a person familiar with the decision.

“We believe this plan will give Alan and his leadership team the opportunity to sustain and build momentum on a range of priorities and initiatives,” Pritzker wrote.

Pritzker also justified Garber’s three-year appointment as a move that will give the University more time to “reflect, in consultation with others, on how best to approach the future presidential search.”

The Corporation formed a subcommittee to review Harvard’s presidential search process earlier this year and for a while, it appeared that the governing boards intended to first develop a roadmap for the next search before making a permanent appointment.

At the time, Pritzker told faculty members in April that the Corporation would not make unilateral appointments, pledging to first reevaluate the search process, which has been widely criticized for being too secretive.

The decision to punt on an official presidential search process for another year will save the Corporation from further scrutiny after the governing boards received almost nonstop coverage in national media outlets during the twilight of Gay’s presidency last year.

But Friday’s appointment also reflected the extent to which Garber has thrilled the Corporation — and other affiliates across the University — with his leadership during the spring semester.

Despite the interim tag, Garber rarely operated as if his position at the helm of the University was precarious, making at least two transatlantic trips and three visits to Washington during his first seven months in office.

“I am the interim president,” Garber said in a February interview with the Harvard Magazine, an alumni publication. “But the problems we need to deal with are not interim problems.”

In addition to appointing an interim provost, Garber adopted a monumental pledge that Harvard will avoid taking official stances on controversial public policy issues. His presidential task forces on antisemitism and anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias also released their initial recommendations this summer, with a final report expected in the fall.

Several former Harvard presidents and prominent faculty praised Garber’s appointment on Friday, touting his efforts to steer the University through its greatest challenges.

Former Arts and Humanities Dean Robin E. Kelsey said in a statement that “Alan has been the steadiest and most circumspect of university leaders at a time when those qualities are in short supply.”

Bruce D. Walker, the director of the Ragon Institute of Mass General, MIT, and Harvard, called Garber’s appointment a “brilliant choice.”

“Alan Garber is an inspirational and principled leader who is the perfect person to steward Harvard through challenging times,” Walker wrote. “Having had the opportunity to work closely with him as he led the University through the fractious COVID crisis, I have profound respect for his integrity, judgement, investment in others, and his ability to build consensus.”

Garber is also the first Harvard president in more than 50 years with a degree from Harvard College. The last Harvard president to receive an undergraduate degree from the University was Nathan M. Pusey, class of 1928, who served from 1953 to 1971.

Garber also has a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard and a M.D. from Stanford Medical School. He previously served as a member of Stanford University’s faculty for 25 years, where he led the Center for Health Policy and Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research.

In 2011, Garber returned to Cambridge after former Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust recruited him to serve as her provost.

“Serving the University is a great privilege,” Garber wrote in his email on Friday. “I am excited by the prospect of what we can achieve in these next years and will have more to say about our efforts on many fronts when the fall term begins.”

—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.