I’m a Progressive. Here’s Why I’m Glad Harvard’s New Provost Isn’t.

John F. Manning ’82, Harvard’s newly minted interim provost, is a conservative. He’s also an exceptional pick.

Like most students at this University, I lean progressive. As such, I object to the right-wing legal movement to which Manning belongs. Still, his appointment by interim University President Alan M. Garber ’76 invites us, students and faculty, to reevaluate our picture of excellent administration and the academic project it serves.

That picture ought to include Manning.

Since Garber chose Manning — until then, dean of Harvard Law School — as interim provost, I’ve heard some discontent from peers and others about his selection. These objections have been rooted not in his administrative acumen nor his devotion to the school but in a misguided vision of what academic leadership must look like at Harvard.

At Harvard, Manning is an outlier. In a faculty of which less than two percent identify as conservative, he stands almost alone. This is a man whose legal beliefs land him in the same ideological universe as Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas: He’s a textualist — the kind of jurist who takes the Constitution at face value, regarding the diction of its framers as chiseled-in-stone truth.

Manning clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin G. Scalia, whose strict, textualist reading of American constitutional law has fueled a sweeping and tireless conservative legal campaign that has hollowed out the Voting Rights Act, stripped women of the right to choose, and kept assault weapons on our streets.

I’ll be clear: I have serious concerns about Manning’s legal philosophy. In the hands of others, at least, textualism has been truly damaging to social progress and civil liberties.

But for the purposes of the University, we ought to concern ourselves with Manning’s fitness as an educator and administrator. In that criterion, he excels. Indeed, his conservative tendencies make him more capable — not less — to lead an increasingly liberal and ideologically homogeneous campus.

He’s already proven it. When Manning ascended to the post of HLS dean in the summer of 2017, some were leery of his political leanings. In the course of his tenure, though, he demonstrated an administrative superpower: the ability to subordinate personal politics to the service of the University and its educational mission.

As dean, Manning took a big-tent approach to community leadership, making space for groups across the ideological spectrum at HLS. He nurtured relationships with organizations like La Alianza and Lambda, HLS’ Latinx and LGTBQ+ affinity groups, and created programming that sought to expand the arena of community dialogue.

Manning also brought to his deanship a commitment to viewpoint diversity and institutional neutrality on politically charged issues. This meant staying silent when then-HLS lecturer Brett M. Kavanaugh faced sexual misconduct allegations during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, as well as when the formation of a religious freedom law clinic drew concern from LGBTQ+ students.

His work has been demanding. The pursuit of academic freedom is neither glamorous nor universally appealing. But Manning has borne that burden as HLS dean with grace. It is no surprise that, among peers on the right and left alike, he is regarded with reverence.

Manning has sought to make Harvard what it should be — what its mission of free intellectual development and exchange demands it be. Progressive students like myself have for too long lacked the opposition that would enable us to become more refined, empathetic, and effective advocates of our causes.

We need professors who will challenge us. We need our conservative peers to feel safe expressing their opinions in classrooms and dining halls and dormitories. We need to have the hard conversations necessary to better us as thinkers, communicators, and community members.

It will take seasoned, conscientious, faithful leadership to move in that direction, and I couldn’t care less whether it comes from people that voted for Romney in 2012.

In other words, this is Manning’s moment.

Elevating people who differ from us in politics but share in our academic mission lets us put our money where our mouth is. It shows that we care about maintaining a healthy and competitive marketplace of ideas at Harvard.

At a time when the world fears Harvard has abandoned its commitment to free exchange, placing academics like Manning in positions of power serves as a potent response, both rhetorically and substantively.

I may disagree with him politically, but I’d like to believe that the Harvard Manning envisions is a place where I could say so to his face. Where we could have it out. Where ideas could clash and trade and change. Where everyone could learn by being challenged.

If that’s Manning’s Harvard, I’m all in.

Lorenzo Z. Ruiz ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Greenough Hall. His column, “Searching for Harvard,” runs bi-weekly on Mondays.