Harvard is up to the challenge, Garber says

With the start of the fall semester fast approaching and the memory of a contentious 2023-24 academic year still fresh, the Gazette sat down with the University’s new president, Alan Garber, to discuss the challenges and opportunities ahead. Garber, who was appointed on an interim basis in January and affirmed as the University’s leader earlier this month, expressed optimism about the excellence and character of Harvard students — evidenced by a record number of Rhodes Scholars last year and more recently by success at the Paris Olympics — and the desire of the community to come together despite differences. He also noted that discord around national and global events, including the Gaza war, is not going away, and that part of a university’s role in the world is to teach those with conflicting beliefs to exchange views by listening as well as talking. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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Harvard athletes and alums did very well at the Paris Olympics, taking home 13 medals. Are there lessons for first-years in this demonstration of excellence?

Not long after I arrived at Harvard as an undergraduate, I noticed that most Harvard students don’t want limited choice. They seek “both/and,” not “either/or.” They don’t accept the notion that they can only do one thing really well, and they often succeed in the most stunning and improbable ways.

This is a place of audacious ambition. You can be a great student and also a graceful dancer, a swift cyclist, or a high-scoring forward. Our Olympians are examples of “both/and” at the very highest level. Each of their stories is inspiring. They have taught us that you can pursue a passion and still be successful at other pursuits. One activity can reinforce the other.

How are you approaching your first full year as president?

People can expect a heightened sense of urgency: a sense of urgency about overcoming the challenges we face and a sense of urgency about pursuing the opportunities before us. This is not a time that calls for complacency. This is not a time that calls for standing still. And this is not a time that allows us to ignore the problems that confront us. Although our community is divided about issues that matter deeply, fundamentally we remain one community. What I hear on our campus and from our alumni is great optimism about the University’s future, despite serious concerns about the challenges we face today. It is my responsibility to ensure that optimism is justified.

What do you see as the biggest challenges for the upcoming academic year?

Events in the Middle East and the presidential election will heighten tensions on campus. We have unfinished business in combating hate and bias, especially toward members of our community who are Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, Jewish, and Israeli. Our biggest challenge is ensuring that the best aspects of our culture are experienced by everyone on our campus. We need to cultivate empathy, learn how to talk to one another, and understand how to listen to people who differ from us. We have announced several initiatives and are taking significant steps to address these issues, including through the activities of the task forces that will issue final reports and recommendations this semester, but achieving our goals will take time.

Is there any way to avoid protests and strife on campus?

With widespread reports of planned protests at Harvard and other universities, nobody should be surprised if they take place. The right to protest is enshrined in the University-Wide Statement on Rights and Responsibilities, assuring every member of the community’s “right to press for action on matters of concern.” But, as the statement sets out, with those rights come responsibilities, which have been clarified in recent months. Our policies concerning expression, protest, and the use of space have been communicated broadly as well.

I hope that every member of our community who contemplates exercising the right to protest will recognize that universities are dedicated to learning. They seek to illuminate and persuade by drawing on facts and reasoning, not coercion. Coercive tactics lack legitimacy, and they are inimical to the ideals of the University. The same is true of discrimination and exclusion, which should never be tolerated.

People in our community are grieving about a war that has affected many of us deeply and personally. Grief should never be turned into disdain or hostility toward other members of our community, or anyone else, based on their identities. But grief is real. When we encounter one another, and especially when emotions run high, we should recognize the personal losses that members of our community have experienced, and we should acknowledge their pain and suffering. Beyond statements of rights and responsibilities, let us remember the basic humanity of those around us and the obligations we have to one another.

Can respect be taught? Can empathy be taught? Is it part of the University’s job to strengthen these qualities in students?

Harvard students today have had different educational experiences than those who arrived even a decade ago. They have grown up in an era of increasing polarization, with online connections permeating every aspect of their lives. We need to acknowledge these changes as the University fulfills its role as an educator. We cannot assume that every matriculating student is ready to be exposed to a wide range of beliefs, opinions, and unfamiliar facts, and to have their own view of the world challenged. It is incumbent upon us to set norms and to foster a culture of curiosity and inquiry in which the discovery and dissemination of truth thrive. Knowing that such fundamental changes take time adds to the urgency of our task.

Where do you see opportunities in the coming year?

The opportunities are many. They begin with a renewed focus on excellence in our core mission of teaching, learning, and research. The pursuit of excellence has long been synonymous with Harvard’s name. It remains the focus of our campus. But that is overlooked when public attention is directed toward events like protests and reports of bias and hate.

In so many domains — research, learning, extracurricular activities, public service — our community seeks success. There are many opportunities to support such efforts. The FAS is looking at ways to ensure that the humanities will have a greater impact in the future. Many students want a strong education in the humanities even when their primary interest is in a STEM field. In the sciences, major advances in the tools available to make new discoveries in the physical and life sciences are accelerating discovery and application to products, ranging from batteries to robotics to medical diagnostics to therapies. Perhaps the most visible of those tools is artificial intelligence. With its applicability to nearly every area of University activity, we are working quickly to apply and understand AI in tandem, exploring risks and opportunities on frontiers that seem to expand every day. You can expect to see a lot more activity in that arena going forward.

These are examples of a wide range of academic opportunities that are before us. I’ll have more to say about them in the coming months.

When Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker announced your presidency, she called this an especially demanding moment for higher education. What makes the moment so demanding, and have any of those forces weakened or shifted since last year?

The challenges that make it a demanding moment are broad and not unique to Harvard. We are a research university, steeped in scholarship and teaching. But in recent years trust in institutions has declined and expertise has come to be viewed with rising skepticism. There are complaints about the cost of education and doubt about its value. At Harvard, 55 percent of our undergraduates are on financial aid; their families pay an average of $13,000 per year. About 24 percent of families pay nothing for their child’s Harvard College education. Pointing out these facts, and that college graduates continue to earn substantially more than high school graduates, can help, but the misperceptions are tenacious.

We also face widely publicized lawsuits and congressional investigations. The resulting impression that higher education has lost its way has political consequences. Legislation has been proposed that would impose large financial penalties, including more punitive endowment taxes, and even mandate a review of nonprofit status. Needless to say, if such legislation were to become law, institutions like ours would have far fewer resources to support financial aid, teaching, and research.

The most challenging aspect of the moment we face now is that our community is divided.  Social movements and protests have a long history at Harvard. Typically, students, along with other community members, have directed their protests against University administrations or outside parties. That is less true today. We now have protests and counterprotests, and the protests are sometimes experienced as personal attacks. At Harvard, this level of division has not been a feature of protests for many decades. We need to embrace the challenge of both encouraging debate and maintaining goodwill.

The task forces on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias and anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian bias have issued preliminary reports. How are you viewing their initial recommendations?

The interim recommendations are constructive and helpful. Their purpose is to set forth initial steps before the work of the task forces is complete. Some of these steps are educational and include training and orientation activities, as well as courses that will help students understand the issues in their full complexity. Other steps are structural, including religious accommodations that members of the community have requested.

Both task forces have emphasized that the path forward needs to be firmly grounded in our values as a university and as a community. The bias that we are trying to address is incompatible with the values of mutual respect, recognizing the humanity in one another, and using reason and facts to reach conclusions about controversial issues. The final recommendations, which will be submitted this fall, will be informed by extensive data collection to better characterize the situation we’re facing and to ensure that the measures we ultimately adopt will be effective.

Institutional voice is also being addressed. The faculty working group on that issue has reported and their recommendations have been accepted. Why was this work important?

The reaction that I’ve heard to the report of the Working Group on Institutional Voice, with its recommendation that the University be deliberate and limited in how and when it uses its official voice, has been overwhelmingly positive. Another group is exploring the implementation of the working group’s recommendations. The institutional voice report is an important component of our efforts to promote effective speech. It limits the circumstances under which stating a public, institutional view on social and political issues could create an orthodoxy that deters others from openly disagreeing with those views. It does so by enjoining the University to avoid staking out positions on topics that are not core to the University’s mission. The University should not have a foreign policy. It should not opine about the validity of public policy positions that are not about the business of the University. By that means, it is hoped that we will open more space for our students, faculty, and other members of our community to express a range of views on the topics of the day — and discuss and debate them in constructive ways.

There are all these efforts addressing different pieces of this difficult puzzle. Are you satisfied with where we are now in our response?

I doubt that I will ever be fully satisfied with where we are, because I am eager to see change. These problems should be addressed with alacrity. But looking back, I am very grateful for the work of the many, many people who have tried to develop solutions, since we have moved quickly and made progress.

Efforts to support diversity and inclusion — in academia and elsewhere — have lately been under attack. Has this affected the University’s commitment to building a diverse community of people with many different backgrounds?

When the Supreme Court announced its decision regarding the consideration of race in undergraduate admissions, we immediately stated that we will comply with the law and that our commitment to diversity remains. That commitment is longstanding, derived in large part from former President Derek Bok’s work. His argument, which I fully embrace, is that diversity is an ingredient of excellence at a university and that the entire community gains when we draw from as broad a pool of talent as possible. Exposure to a wide range of views, backgrounds, and experiences leads to learning and growth, and our commitment to diversity across many dimensions — demographic, socioeconomic, life experience, ideological, and many others — benefits every member of our community.

Are there other matters that you expect to be important in the coming year?

Allston is taking shape and its future as a vibrant area of the University is coming into view. Construction is underway on the new home for the American Repertory Theater at the David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Creativity & Performance, along with our first University-wide conference center in the David Rubenstein Treehouse. The Science and Engineering Complex has emerged as a hub for research, education, and collaboration since it opened three years ago, and construction of the first phase of the Enterprise Research Campus is underway. It promises to attract research-oriented enterprises that will draw on, and contribute to, our intellectual community.

In each of these areas, and so many others, I see the “both/and” spirit and everything that it generates. There is a lot going on at Harvard — a lot to inspire excitement, joy, and pride — and I am looking forward to acknowledging and celebrating all that we’re accomplishing, and the many ways we are making a difference in the world.

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