Will Harvard Law School’s Interim Dean Return to the ‘Quiet Life’?

Just nine months before John C.P. Goldberg became interim dean of Harvard Law School, he wrote in an email to The Crimson that he was still “trying to return to the quiet life of a legal academic” after a previous stint in the school’s administration.

But no such “quiet life” was in the cards for him.

On Jan. 2, 2024, Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned following a winter of scandal over an appearance in Congress and allegations of plagiarism. Then-Provost Alan M. Garber ’76 took her place and, in March, Law School Dean John F. Manning ’82 left the school to replace Garber as interim provost. In his place, Goldberg — who had served five years as a deputy dean at HLS, ending in 2022 — took the helm.

It was a sequence of events that Goldberg couldn’t have — and hadn’t — planned for.

Now, the Law School is five months into its search for a new permanent dean, and, with a year of experience under his belt, Goldberg is widely seen by his colleagues as a prime candidate for the position.

Over the last year, HLS officials have navigated conflict with their own student body over library study-ins, divestment referenda, and the fallout from the Supreme Court’s decision to ban race-based affirmative action.

So far, in public, Goldberg has been quiet — even as his tenure has been anything but. In interviews with The Crimson, many HLS students said that his leadership hasn’t been on their radars. But faculty have praised his year in office, and some endorsed him for the permanent deanship.

HLS spokesperson Jeff Neal declined to comment on whether Goldberg was under consideration for the permanent role.

‘Go Ask JG’

Goldberg was born on Long Island, the son of an English professor who specialized in the novels of 18th century satirist Henry Fielding. In 1983, he graduated from Wesleyan University with high honors. After Wesleyan, he received an M.Phil. in politics from Oxford University and an M.A. in politics from Princeton University. Soon after, he began attending the New York University Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Law Review and graduated in 1991.

University of Notre Dame law professor Roger P. Alford, who edited the Law Review alongside Goldberg, remembered Goldberg as “super thoughtful, careful, erudite.”

Alford recalled being particularly impressed with one of Goldberg’s articles on former Supreme Court justice Benjamin N. Cardozo, which argued that Cardozo’s writings — seemingly fragmented and contradictory — formed a systematic theory of common law. That article, Alford said, struck Goldberg’s peers with its sophistication.

“Everyone knew at the time that he was destined for greatness,” Alford said.

By Courtesy of Roger P. Alford

City University of New York Law School professor Donna Lee, who worked with Goldberg at the NYU Law Review, recalled that he often worked on the New York Times crossword puzzle while sitting in the review’s basement offices.

After graduating from NYU, Goldberg worked briefly as an associate at Hill and Barlow, a Boston-area law firm, before joining the faculty at Vanderbilt University Law School in 1995. In 2008, he arrived at Harvard.

Goldberg’s area of legal expertise is tort law, a subject on which he has written extensively with his co-author, Benjamin C. Zipursky. The two have become the most-cited scholars in the field, a branch of civil law that deals with compensating individuals for harms inflicted on them by others.

Goldberg and Zipursky worked together to develop civil recourse theory — which argues that torts are not best understood as an instrumental way to advance social goals nor to repair the wrong. Instead, torts are a means for victims to confront and make a demand on the persons who wronged them, they argued.

Tort law “makes real the principle that for every right there is a remedy,” they wrote in a 2010 article.

Classmates and colleagues said Goldberg wasn’t just a sharp legal thinker — he also had a knack for dealing with people.

Michael W. Dowdle, a professor of law at the National University of Singapore who worked with Goldberg at the NYU Law Review when they were both students, remembered that he went to Goldberg after a constitutional law class to complain that the professor said something wrong.

“I’m just gonna let it slide,” Dowdle recalled telling Goldberg. “I’m not going to challenge it.”

But Goldberg presented an alternative: Challenge the professor, but with tact and a little flattery.

“Just be obsequious,” he said, according to Dowdle.

Arthur Ripstein, a professor of law at the University of Toronto who has known Goldberg since 1991, said Goldberg had a sense of fairness — and skill at mediating disputes — that prepared him well for the interim deanship.

“He is a very effective advocate, but he’s also very good at being fair-minded with people who disagree with him,” Ripstein said. “Being a dean of an American elite law school — basically your job consists in dealing with extremely smart people with very strong advocacy skills.”

Dowdle, who sat on the NYU Law Review with Goldberg, said he recalled Goldberg as “very good with people.”

Dowdle said he himself was “a little bit of an eccentric” at NYU — but Goldberg, he recalled, handled the awkward moments with aplomb.

“We all felt he handled some difficult situations very competently,” Dowdle said.

Harvard Law School professor Maureen Brady, who currently serves as one of HLS’ deputy deans, wrote in a statement that Goldberg is “a bedrock of this institution.”

“Even before he was Interim Dean, if I was facing a complicated problem in the school or the profession, someone would inevitably say: ‘go ask JG,’” Brady wrote. “We are incredibly lucky to have him serving in this position.”

Conflict on Campus

Though many of Goldberg’s colleagues say he has a steady hand, his leadership has been tested by repeated confrontations between the HLS administration and student leaders.

Haas Lounge, located in the Caspersen Student Center, has been a theater of student protests for years. The room was nicknamed “Belinda Hall” by students in 2016 to honor Belinda Sutton, a woman enslaved by the prominent Royall family of Massachusetts.

Last October, 200 students met in the lounge — nicknamed “Belinda Hall” by students to honor Belinda Sutton, a woman enslaved by the prominent Royall family of Massachusetts — to discuss student activism on campus.

A month before that, HLS administrators decided to restrict the space. The dean of students and assistant dean for community engagement, equity, and belonging sent out an email to students banning “planned, organized, or coordinated gatherings that preclude or interfere” with individual or small-group study in the lounge.

Administrators also announced that Goldberg had formed a “Haas Lounge Advisory Group” to decide whether to modify rules governing the space’s use.

The HLS Student Government fired back against the restrictions in September by passing a resolution stating that the administration “should not create any barriers to free speech, dissent, protest, organizing; or other normal and long-standing uses of the space.”

Timothy M. Barbera, a third-year HLS student, said the conflict made him skeptical of Goldberg because he did not know how closely the interim dean was involved in the protest limits.

“It’s not clear to me which decisions made with regard to the Lounge are made by him versus are made by the dean team or someone else,” Barbera said.

“And so I don’t really know who’s to blame for things I don’t necessarily agree with,” he added.

Neal, the HLS spokesperson, wrote in a statement that Goldberg’s Haas Lounge Advisory Group has “been meeting with a wide range of students and faculty and has received an equally wide range of feedback.”

Student activists and administrators have also clashed over a referendum condemning disciplinary action for study-in protestors.

By Julian J. Giordano

After HLS students staged silent “study-ins” in the Langdell Hall library to protest the war in Gaza, they were temporarily banned from the library. In response, the Law School Student Government decided in November to hold a school-wide referendum condemning the library suspensions — but the administration and student government have yet to administer the vote.

Dean of Students Stephen L. Ball initially stalled the effort in November, and since then, administrators and the student government have still not settled on voting dates.

According to a member of the HLS Student Government, Goldberg met with the Student Council in early January to inform them that the administration would not administer the referendum as drafted. According to the student, Goldberg said he objected to language in the referendum — but did not specify what language or why.

“The only thing that I know about Dean Goldberg is that a bunch of students tried to have a referendum on library ban suspension, and that he and his administration refused to administer the vote or cooperate in that,” said Reilly A. Johnson, a first-year HLS student.

“I just really would prefer a dean that is more aligned with student interests and has a passion for what we care about,” she added.

Neal, the HLS spokesperson, wrote in a statement that Goldberg has met regularly with students, faculty, and staff, including more than 50 leaders of registered student organizations.

But Goldberg drew broad praise from faculty — including Andrew M. Crespo ’05, who was temporarily banned from Harvard’s main library after joining study-ins there. Crespo wrote in a statement that Goldberg “has always been a scholar’s scholar.”

“What I have come to admire most about his leadership in this difficult moment for higher education is that he brings the same broad spirit of curiosity and collaborative engagement to the complicated job of helming the Law School,” Crespo wrote.

Rosalie S. Abella, a visiting professor at HLS and a former justice of the Canadian Supreme Court, praised Goldberg’s handling of campus events.

“I’ve admired his ability to be strongly protective of the integrity of the Law School and its mandate, at the same time that he was protective of the well-being of the students and the faculty,” she said.

‘All Figured Out’

Goldberg stepped into the HLS interim deanship to fill the sudden vacuum left by Manning’s appointment as interim provost — and many faculty at the school said he was the right man for the moment.

“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 statement.

“And he did it for all the right reasons,” she added.

Goldberg has issued no public statements on whether he wants to keep his seat in Griswold Hall. But with a year in interim office, he could be a natural fit for the permanent deanship.

“Nobody other than Dean Manning has played a more central role in administering the Law School in my 16 years on the faculty than John Goldberg,” HLS l professor Michael J. Klarman wrote in a statement endorsing Goldberg for the role, pointing to Goldberg’s service as deputy dean and on a committee overseeing HLS’ hiring of faculty from other universities.

Klarman argued that it was generally unwise for the Law School to tap external candidates for the position, unless there were no strong internal candidates or an internal pick would divide the faculty. No HLS dean since 1910 has been appointed from outside the school’s faculty.

But dozens of HLS students said in interviews with The Crimson that they still do not know enough about the interim dean to come to a judgement.

“As far as substantive policies go, I’m not really sure what he’s done,” Matthew J. Rocha, a first-year law student said.

“He seems like he’s acting a bit as a holdover, maybe until a permanent dean is found,” he added.

But, as the Law School waits for Garber to tap a permanent dean, Goldberg has said he’s settling into his interim role. In May, two months after his appointment, Goldberg addressed the Law School’s 2024 graduating class.

“I’ve learned that we come closest to getting things right when we approach every person and every issue with an open mind,” Goldberg said in his speech.

“Now, I’ve been dean for two months, so I’ve got this all figured out,” he joked.

—Staff writer Saketh Sundar contributed reporting.

—Staff writer Neil H. Shah contributed reporting.

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

—Staff writer Bradford D. Kimball can be reached at bradford.kimball@thecrimson.com.