Who Could Fix Harvard? Change of Leadership Would Have To Go Beyond President Gay

If Harvard University’s governing corporation decides to replace President Gay, or if Ms. Gay herself decides the honorable move is to resign, who might take over? My own view, as someone who warned publicly and emphatically in December of 2022 and in May of 2022 about the antisemitism at Harvard, is that any genuine change of leadership would have to extend beyond Ms. Gay.It could also have to include the departure of the provost, Alan Garber, who was sitting behind Ms. Gay at last week’s disastrous congressional hearing; the exit of the university’s executive vice president, Meredith Weenick; and the firing of the outside law firm, WilmerHale, that prepared Ms. Gay for the congressional hearing. Harvard paid the same law firm millions of dollars to lose the case over affirmative action in admissions.Suppose Harvard really does want a reset. Suppose it figures that the risk of appearing to cave in to pressure from Bill Ackman and Representative Elise Stefanik is outweighed by the risk of being saddled for the next decade with failed leadership. Suppose that, on the substance, they agree with some of the members of Congress and some of the most thoughtful major donors (including Mayor Bloomberg), who have argued that the outbreak of antisemitism on campus is related to the lack of ideological diversity among the faculty.Suppose that they see the pro-Hamas protests plaguing Harvard as less of a legal free speech issue and more a symptom of a broader decline in educational quality linked closely to leftist ideological conformity. Suppose some of them found Ms. Gay’s apology, with its use of the phrase “my truth” and made to the student daily, to be itself disqualifying. Who might fix things? Not the obvious people. Professor Danielle Allen is a constructive figure and wrote a fine job application in the form of a Washington Post essay, but the timing of the essay is a little too convenient. Professor Noah Feldman is brilliant, but a free-speech-minded law professor is not what Harvard needs now. Professor Larry Summers has been outspoken but restoring him to the Harvard presidency from which he resigned under pressure in 2006 is not the right solution, either.To change a large and decentralized institution like Harvard — to repair the ideological imbalance and vanquish the antisemitism — would take someone who knows Harvard well but who also has toughness and gravitas. Someone who can fend off the investigations from Congress and from the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights. Someone who knows how to fundraise and who isn’t going to be pushed around by anyone — students, faculty, donors, politicians.Who might qualify? The vice chairwoman of the Harvard Board of Overseers, Geraldine Acuña-Sunshine, would make a great Harvard president. She’s Jewish and has impeccable pro-Israel credentials. She also understands law, finance, and scientific research. She also has that quality that is scarcest of all around Harvard — humility.Senator Romney has been a turnaround artist going back to his days at Bain Capital and at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. With Joanna Jacobson, Seth Klarman, Bill Hellman, and Mark Nunelly, he was a key signer of a perceptive early letter calling out Harvard for its failings, which have since only gotten worse. Mr. Romney’s lieutenant governor, Kerry Healey, was a strong president of Babson College and could also help Harvard out of its crisis.Charlie Baker followed in Mr. Romney’s footsteps as governor of Massachusetts, winning bipartisan acclaim in an era of partisan polarization. He’s so good on Jewish issues that he and his wife marked their own children’s bar mitzvahs. He’s in the higher education sector already as the president of the NCAA, a job where he probably makes more money than the president of Harvard does, with fewer headaches.Ben Sasse, who was in the United States Senate, is now the president of the University of Florida. He got the response to October 7 right in a way that won national attention and that contrasted with how Harvard bungled it. As an undergraduate at Harvard, he was on the wrestling team. He’s written for the Atlantic about higher education.Some of these individuals could be part of the answer in a successful Harvard turnaround. Whether the Harvard Corporation will look in their direction, or to those like them, for help is another question, the answer to which will help determine Harvard’s future reputation.

Who Could Fix Harvard? Change of Leadership Would Have To Go Beyond President Gay

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