Harvard Keeps Alan Garber as President Through Mid-2027

(Bloomberg) -- Harvard University will keep Alan Garber as its president until mid-2027, giving him another three years in the job after he took over as interim leader when Claudine Gay resigned in January.

A “full-scale search for his eventual successor” will start in the late spring or early summer of 2026, Harvard said in a statement Friday. Garber, a 69-year-old physician and economist, had previously served as university provost at the oldest and richest US college. 

Garber became interim president as student protests sparked by the Israel-Hamas war roiled campuses nationwide. Gay and the president of the University of Pennsylvania resigned after giving disastrous testimony before Congress last year about antisemitism on their campuses, and Harvard still faces probes on the subject from two congressional committees. Major donors including alumni Ken Griffin and Len Blavatnik have said they’re pausing gifts to the school. 

“Alan has done an outstanding job leading Harvard through extraordinary challenges since taking on his interim presidential duties seven months ago,” Penny Pritzker, who leads Harvard Corp., said in the statement. 

“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,” she said.

‘Excellence’ Focus 

In a separate statement, Garber vowed to focus on “rededicating ourselves to academic excellence” and the ways in which Harvard’s teaching and research can benefit the broader society. 

“That excellence is made possible by the free exchange of ideas, open inquiry, creativity, empathy, and constructive dialogue among people with diverse backgrounds and views,” he said. “This is a challenging time, one of strong passions and strained bonds among us.”

Students protesters took over part of Harvard Yard earlier this year and remained in a tense standoff with Garber and the university until shortly before graduation ceremonies. Echoing their counterparts at colleges from New York to California, they slammed Israel for its retaliatory response in Gaza to the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas and called on their school to divest from the Jewish state and US weapons makers. 

Garber has already announced several policy changes, including a return to requiring standardized tests for undergraduate admissions and a commitment to institutional neutrality on matters that don’t directly affect the university’s core function. 

Earlier this year, Cornell University’s president abruptly said she’d be stepping down. The school’s provost was appointed to take the top job for two years. 

The University of Pennsylvania is still being run by an interim president after Elizabeth Magill resigned in December.

(Updates with Pritzker comment in fourth paragraph)

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