Harvard President’s Rocky Path Ahead

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Frank S. Zhou 0:00
The tenure of interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber, class of 1976, will likely be one of the most consequential for the university in recent memory. As he looks to heal a deeply divided campus, the longtime administrator has insisted that he's up for the challenge. Today, on Newstalk, we join two of our reporters to talk about what he's done so far in office and his rocky path ahead. From Plympton Street, I'm Frank Zhou, this is Newstalk.

Emma H. Haidar 0:32
My name is Emma Haidar, and I cover the central administration for the Harvard Crimson.

Cam E. Kettles 0:37
My name is Cam E. Kettles and I cover central administration for the Crimson.

Frank S. Zhou 0:41
Thank you so much, Cam and Emma, for joining us. Could you tell us a little bit about what Garber has done since entering office?

Cam E. Kettles 0:47
President Garber has really made two major decisions since taking office and they came back to back. The first was the announcement of two task forces, one to address Islamophobia and the other to address antisemitism. This action caused a bit of controversy over one of the co-chair selections, but for the most part was met pretty positively across the Harvard community. The second action he took was to really specify fairly strict guidelines in terms of what protest is allowed on campus. This sort of set the tone for the way that he would choose to address division and what was a very active protest scene last semester.

Frank S. Zhou 1:26
And, coming into office, Garber had acknowledged essentially that the university is at an especially tumultuous time in its recent history, tell us the messaging that he's offered up to students and faculty.

Emma H. Haidar 1:38
Prior to being Interim President Garber worked behind the scenes in senior administration and as provost for 12 years. He was one of the first administrators to publicly recognize the shortcomings of the administration's messaging regarding tension on campus and the Israel-Hamas war, in an interview with Crimson last fall, and in all the statements that he has put forth so far, in just the five or so short weeks that he has been president have been really focused on trying to bring together a very fractured campus.

Frank S. Zhou 2:11
Cam, you mentioned new protest guidelines that Garber has issued. And a piece of this is students allegedly saying you know that it's been difficult to express their opinions openly in class. Tell us a little bit about what Garber said on that front with regards to free speech in classrooms.

Cam E. Kettles 2:25
This question of how universities beyond just Harvard balance a culture of free speech with this desire to make students feel safe and feel comfortable is a question that universities face for a very long time. So you have allegations both that the university is censoring speech, and also that the university is not doing enough to protect students. And we interviewed John Wilson, who is an expert in free speech and he said these guidelines are a threat. They're a way that the University says here's our warning. So far, there has been at least a delay in the really, really large protest activity that we saw last fall. The first protest was last Thursday. So it's very clear that the university is trying to at least minimize the effect of protests on campus.

Frank S. Zhou 3:16
All of this — Garber's reckoning with free speech in classrooms and on campus and otherwise — is coming amidst intense pressure from numerous constituencies both inside and outside the university. Tell us a little bit about the pressure that Garber is under right now.

Emma H. Haidar 3:30
Harvard is currently under investigation from the Department of Education regarding concerns around antisemitism on campus, which was a complaint that was filed last semester. But also just last week, the Department of Education opened an inquiry into concerns around anti-Palestinian anti-Muslim discrimination on campus. But there's also extreme pressure from Congress. The Committee on Education the Workforce and Harvard have been engaged in this very intense back and forth over the committee's demands for documents as they conduct their investigation into concerns around antisemitism on campus, but also allegations around the university's treatment of plagiarism allegations against Claudine Gay.

Cam E. Kettles 4:14
Congress is posing three major threats to Harvard. The first is they're requesting meeting minutes and text messages between members of the Corporation and the Board of Overseers: the two top governing bodies of Harvard, and they're not letting up on that ask. And so it really does become a question of how much very private material is Harvard willing, or really able to give Congress and that will expose a lot about the decision-making processes that Harvard would like to keep private. The second thing is that Congress and these investigations are keeping Harvard in the news and I mean the national news. Harvard has been an immediate storm since October but it is still making national headlines and that is largely because of Congress. The third thing is that this impending threat of a subpoena could be a really big problem forever. We can't really forget the fact that the first major moment of weakness for Claudine Gay was testimony before Congress. And now that same threat is being levied against the current president. If anyone from Harvard's top administration does decide to testify or is forced to testify, that will be another major national moment. Everyone who was looking at clotting gaze testimony will be looking at either Alan Garber's testimony or senior fellow Penny Pritzker, his testimony and looking to compare seeing where they make mistakes. And it really can't be understated the risk that that has for this administration going forward.

Emma H. Haidar 5:46
The other major issue is donor support. Last semester, a few high-profile donors pledged to stop donating to Harvard due to concerns over antisemitism on campus. And just recently, Ken Griffin, who had donated $300 million to Harvard last year had a school renamed after him was one of Harvard's most generous donors also said he would not donate to Harvard until the changes he likes to see are in place. And we've been talking to a wide array of professors of Harvard affiliates around what's next for Harvard. And a lot of the faculty members also said what is the line between academic independence and the need to heal these relationships with donors. In our interview, we asked Garber about if he was concerned about donor pressure. He said that the university is obviously listening to a wide array of voices.

Cam E. Kettles 6:39
But it is certainly a problem of public perception that a lot of them have said very publicly at the moment. They're not going to donate anymore. Some of those statements were made post-Gay's resignation, which indicates they believe that the problem is beyond her.

Frank S. Zhou 6:59
So another body that's come under fire — and Cam, you've already mentioned it — is the Harvard Corporation, the University's highest and famously secretive governing board. Could you tell us a little bit about the pressure that the corporation is facing right now as well.

Cam E. Kettles 7:10
When the President of the University of Pennsylvania, Liz McGill, resigned, the president of their board of trustees resigned with her. And the comparison to senior fellow Penny Pritzker decision not to resign, I really don't think can also be understated. The corporation was with Gay: it is the body that selected her as president. It is the body that chose to unanimously support her up until early December post-congressional hearing. And they're not out of this. Especially because they're so tied to her the pressure naturally turns to them. Once President Gay resigns, how do they move forward? What did they do wrong? We spoke to former medical school dean Jeffrey Flier, who said they know that these problems exist and that they had a hand in them. And so while there hasn't been public talk of reform, the next question is, was this perhaps a little bit more institutional. And we also spoke to experts who said, Look, this might be the right time to consider reforms, especially because the next President will be the choice of the corporation. And so their legitimacy going into that process is very important.

Emma H. Haidar 8:19
The Board of Overseers and the corporation met this month face-to-face with Garber for the first time since he was appointed. Well, we don't know what was said at that meeting. Because you know, the corporation doesn't release its meeting minutes, it doesn't publicly announce when it's going to meet, it's likely that they had to have some serious discussions about how to navigate this incredibly tumultuous time for Harvard, but also to plan ahead for the future. In terms of the presidential search. The corporation is pretty distant from the everyday events on campus, a lot of them work in business. Some are former university administrators, some have previous political experience. But I think that there is a fair amount of criticism from affiliates on campus over the way that they handled some pretty important moments for Harvard last semester. It will be interesting if this congressional investigation will push some of the corporation members and their discussions even more into the spotlight than they would like to be.

Frank S. Zhou 9:15
The next big thing on the corporation's plate is the search for Harvard's next president and Cam and Emma you've generated a list of likely candidates for this presidency. Tell us who they are and why we should be paying attention to them.

Emma H. Haidar 9:28
So there's a lot of debate around whether the next candidate should be an internal candidate, someone who's very well familiar with Harvard, and can guide it out of this moment, or someone who is an outsider candidate.

Cam E. Kettles 9:39
Basically, everyone that's evaluated for a university president is evaluated both in terms of their scholarship their record as a teacher in higher education, and their experience as a higher education administrator. There are two additional considerations this time around. The first is there are two additional presidential searches that will conclude before Harvard likely picks as president, one at Yale, and one at Stanford. That matters for the people that we put on our list, because they're likely candidates for those as well. The second is how some of these administrators have dealt with controversies that relate to free speech. And there are people on our list who handled those situations very differently. But they've been tested, they have some sort of record on those issues to the most obvious candidate is Alan M. Garber, because he currently occupies the position. He's been a longtime top Harvard administrator he's the natural candidate. They're also the Harvard Deans. That's John Manning, the Law School dean and Tomiko Brown-Nagin, who's the Radcliffe Dean and also co-chaired the Harvard and Legacy of Slavery report, which was an institutional priority of Harvard's administration and continues to be. There's also the leaders of other higher education institutions. That's Paul Johnson, the president of Wellesley. So, they all have connections to Harvard, whether that be their degrees or places that they've taught.

Emma H. Haidar 11:00
In their January 2 email on Claudine Gay's resignation, the corporation also mentioned that the search for a new Harvard president would be happening in due course, however, they haven't announced publicly a timeline for the official selection of who will be on the search committee. It's typically the 12 fellows of the Harvard Corporation, and three members of the Board of Overseers, but the presidential search process can typically take around six months to anywhere near around a year. Sometime in the next few months, the corporation will probably start soliciting nominations or information and doing a broad array of outreach.

Frank S. Zhou 11:38
Cam and Emma will be bringing us coverage of this presidential search into the coming months. Thank you so much for joining us to talk through what Garber has done so far, his rocky road ahead, and who might be Harvard's next president.

Emma H. Haidar 11:48
Thank you for having us. Thanks.

Frank S. Zhou 11:56
Newstalk is hosted, produced, and edited by Frank S. Zhou. Our Multimedia Chairs are Julian J. Giordano and Addison Y. Liu. Our associate managing editors are Claire Yuan and Elias J. Schisgall. Our Managing Editor is Miles J. Herszenhorn. Our President is J. Sellers Hill. Music in this episode by Bea Wall-Feng. From the Harvard Crimson, this is Newstalk.