This interview was edited for length and clarity.
While the Harvard Corporation exercises fiduciary responsibility for the University, the Board of Overseers plays an oversight role. Last summer, the tax on Harvard’s endowment income was raised from 1.4 percent to 8 percent, and the FAS is staring down a $365 million structural deficit. In the face of financial instability, how should Harvard approach cost cutting?
I think obviously we’re going to have to do some cuts. The advantage of an endowment is it allows you to not rush into cuts and try to do them thoughtfully. I did read that FAS has hired a consultant to try to look at the big structural deficit.
The North Star is going to be Harvard’s mission, so teaching and research at the highest level of excellence. And so you have to keep that in mind. My presumption is we probably have administrative bloat, that would be one area that I’d want to target. And I can say that as a former administrator. I ran the Institute of Politics from 2011 to 2014, and administrative bloat is one thing that has to be clearly looked at.
But at the end of the day, you can’t do much with tuition, you can’t do much with financial aid &emdash; meaning you better not do much with tuition, you better not do much with financial aid. So it’s got to be on the spending side. The professors probably have to teach a little bit more, that probably means getting rid of some adjuncts. But it needs to be done thoughtfully and not in a big rush.
I remember when I was on the IOP Senior Advisory Committee in the late 2000s, the stock market crashed in the 2008 financial crisis. And so we knew we were all going to have to tighten our belts. And they gave us a couple of years to figure out how to do that. They gave us financial goals and said, here’s what you need to do by this day and come up with a plan. And so some of that would make sense as well.
But at least with the College, with FAS, you probably can’t grow your way out of it. A couple of you are from Arizona. The University of Arizona, Arizona State can keep growing their revenue, not so much by increasing tuition, but by increasing students. And Harvard has that challenge. So we’re going to have to look at some of these structural things, but it’s got to be done with an eye towards maintaining that excellence in research and in teaching.
In December, President Garber’s term was extended indefinitely in a bilateral decision by the governing boards. What are your thoughts on the presidential search process and the decision to bypass it? Should faculty or other stakeholders have more of a say?
I think one of the oldest stories at Harvard has been the lack of transparency or engagement with stakeholder groups, by the Corporation and everybody else. So I’ll say that as a general rule: the Corporation can always do a better job with that on anything, whether it’s extending President Garber’s contract or whatever else. I think that goes back to 1650, the original charter, that they probably could be doing better with transparency.
That being said, I like the work he’s been doing, and so I can understand why, in this particular instance where you had somebody who’d been on campus for a long time as the provost, had been acting as the president and was getting pretty good marks from a lot of the different stakeholder groups, I could see why it made sense to go ahead and make him permanent. Don’t put a term on it, because that kind of weakens you as a president.
So that gives him the ability to continue to make the changes, like the change you’re asking about, the first question with the business model. So I think he’s doing a pretty good job, and I suspect it’ll help him become more effective in his leadership by making that change.
In October, a planning body proposed a set of bylaws for a University-wide faculty senate to play a deliberative and advisory role with respect to the governing boards. The proposed senate would be a relatively weak body compared to many other elite institutions. What do you make of the recommendation, and of faculty input to governance more broadly?
Note: Interviews were conducted before the announcement of negotiations between the faculty senate planning body and representatives of top University administrators.
There’s this concept in post-secondary education called shared governance. Harvard, in theory, does follow it. Shared governance is one of the reasons why universities move slowly and bureaucratically. It’s not like a corporation or the military where there’s a hierarchy.
You have administrators, you have staff, you have leaders like President Garber and provosts and deans and people like that. But the faculty plays a really key role. The alumni play a key role. I mean, in a good shared governance model, students have a voice. I’m not sure how much of a voice students have at Harvard and other private schools, but at public schools, University of Kentucky for example, there’s a student Board of Trustees member who’s elected and has a vote just like anybody else. And so, I can see why the faculty would want to increase their role, and I think it’d be good to have a greater faculty role.
The best run universities tend to have a pretty engaged faculty. Now, administrators and faculty often bump heads, so I get the resistance. As far as the specifics of the proposal, I don’t know them, so I don’t want to weigh in on that, but it’s one of those things as an overseer, if I were elected, I’d be open to hearing more about that. I don’t think the Overseers have a direct say in that decision making process, but we would have an indirect say. They would certainly listen to us.
I remember the controversy two years ago in 2024 with some of the some of the students who weren’t allowed to walk, and then they were allowed to walk, and the faculty was weighing in. It was pretty clear that some of the rules either weren’t clear or weren’t fair, and so I hope that was part of that review, because I’m on the Happy committee, the people that wear top hats at Commencement. And so I was there that day at Commencement, and saw the walk out by the students and others who were upset about the students not being able to walk, and it was clear that there was kind of a governance issue that was really the underlying cause there.
Over the past year, Harvard has faced escalating political pressure from the Trump administration. Do you think a deal with the administration, perhaps including a cash settlement, is a practical solution?
In theory, I think a deal could be a good idea, but a bad deal is a bad idea. Title VI is sort of the hook for the original investigation. I’m not a Title VI expert, so I struggle with what has Harvard done from a real technical violation standpoint, if anything? What are the remedies if there’s been a violation? What is the sort of the range of legal punishments? Because the administration’s also pretty clearly been doing extralegal things, and I’m glad that the University has fought successfully in a number of different court cases to push back on things that they didn’t have the power to do.
But this is occupying a lot of time. It’s creating uncertainty in the business model. Just a couple weeks ago, we found out that the military wasn’t going to be able to get grad students who are applying for this coming year. So if it were a sound deal, I’d be okay with the deal, but the devil is sort of in the details. I know that some of the universities that have done cash deals, it’s gone to community and technical colleges. I’d rather the money go there than the administration.
I certainly don’t want a bad deal. But I can understand why the University is trying to negotiate to get a deal, and I also understand why they haven’t been able to reach one, because at least what’s been leaked to the press doesn’t sound like it’s a good deal. But you’ve got a couple more years of this administration in office, and so a deal might be in Harvard’s best interest, but those actual details are going to make a big difference. I just don’t think it’s responsible to say, “No way, I’d never do a deal.” If there are some settlement provisions that don’t micromanage the University, don’t take away academic freedom, address where we may have violated the law &emdash; those are the kinds of elements that there could be value in a deal.
Last semester, Harvard instructed alumni interviewers to not mention applicant race, ethnicity, or national origin in written evaluations, and it was revealed that the Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program had quietly ended. This followed the renaming of the University’s Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging and the closure of offices at the College for minority students, LGBTQ students, and women. Finally, the Department of Justice sued Harvard last month, one of the latest offensives following the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision. What do you make of the recent changes, and of Harvard’s approach to diversity more broadly?
I’ve been interviewing ever since I graduated in ’94. I think one year when I ran for the United States Senate, I was too busy that year, and I didn’t do it. But I’ve been doing it every year, even when I was in office. And I’ve interviewed three students this year, one early and two regular. And I will say that with the new policy for interviewers, I wasn’t able to tell the story of the two students that I interviewed in the spring as well as I would have liked, without being able to make reference in one case to nationality and in the other case to faith. That being said, I don’t want Harvard to violate the rules. The Supreme Court, highest court in the land, issued that ruling.
It does seem like the prohibition on talking about it is maybe excessive in the sense it probably goes beyond what the court decision and federal civil rights laws require, but I’m guessing it was done out of an abundance of caution to kind of keep you away from doing or saying something so that your whole report would have to be tossed out. I don’t know if that is the answer, but it would make some sense. Again, might be good to share if that were the answer. As far as closing down some of the offices again, first you got to follow all the rules. I’m sure there’s some symbolism with this, but it’s also just practical.
I grew up in what we call Northern Kentucky, so it’s the suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio. There was not a lot of diversity in my community, and so Harvard was really impactful for me. To see people from around the world, people from different ethnic and racial backgrounds, people with different political and ideological views &emdash; it was great.
So the staff, the administrators, can help create that environment, so that students feel comfortable and welcomed. I want your fellow students, the next crop of high school seniors who are going to enroll in the fall, to feel like Harvard’s a welcoming place. And so those kinds of offices, those kinds of programs, were part of that. I know those offices have been eliminated, but I don’t know as much about the replacement, or retooling.
In Kentucky, the legislature passed a law requiring some of those offices to be shut down at the public universities. They were able to take some of those folks and give them slightly different duties and slightly different titles, and still provide some level of services to the students who needed it. So my hope is that Harvard’s still doing some of this.
I also recognize that we may not agree with the Supreme Court case, but it is the law. Our law firm, for example, diversity is a very core principle of our firm, and we still want to recruit diverse attorneys, and we have changed our approach to try to comply with the changing environment. Even though there hasn’t been a direct ruling on our world, we would anticipate that if there were a ruling, it would be consistent with the Supreme Court case. So we have now subtly shifted to focus on diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints and talents.
We’re a professional firm. We’re an employer. We’re talking about getting people who are in their late 20s and early 30s, or later for laterals. But we’ve had to adapt, and so I know Harvard has to as well. But coming to college, a lot of you are from 1000s of miles away, and those kinds of offices, programs, and assistance played a big role in helping people feel comfortable and welcome on campus. And I want that to continue.
As a follow up, should the College end legacy admissions and preferences for children of donors?
I’m open to that conversation. The University has always said that the reason why they have those preferences is effectively that the parents, the alums, are more engaged, and the children of alums tend to be more engaged. I’d love to see the data on that. Now, the flip side of that, what’s interesting is Harvard’s gotten more diverse since I was an undergrad in the early 90s. Our percentage of students coming from other countries, percentage of students coming from other parts of America, the racial composition of the class is very different, and so our alumni pool looks very different. I think now the argument about the legacy and the prominent alumni, prominent donor, would be more of a class argument, as opposed to a racial or nationality argument. But I’m certainly open to that.
I didn’t support getting rid of it for athletes. As long as Harvard’s D1, I think it’s okay, and as long as the Ivies have the rules on the floors with the academic index that are relative to the school. I was the faculty fellow for the men’s basketball team, and loved helping to recruit players and talk to their parents, and I think they added a lot to campus. So that’s one I’m more confident in my answer on as far as legacy students and prominent alums.
The Intellectual Vitality Initiative was introduced in 2024 to foster free exchange of ideas and combat self-censorship. What do you make of the state of campus speech, and how can Harvard best promote open discourse?
I think it’s incredibly important to have an initiative like that succeed. One of the things I loved about the IOP, one of the things that was really important when I was the director, was to try to bring people with different points of view to campus in various capacities, and to try to engage in a civil manner. That’s incredibly important, because of a couple things. One, you need people to be exposed. I talked about how great it was for me when I showed up on campus and getting exposed to a lot of people who thought differently than me and had different backgrounds than me.
But the second thing is, sometimes folks self censor. And if you want to create an environment where folks can say their views and maybe they’re, I don’t want to use the word unpopular, but maybe they’re a little bit different &emdash; part of being in college, part of learning, is being exposed to different ideas and engaging with them. And maybe that means you’ll change your mind after that exposure and engagement. I’m all for stuff like that.
I hope the IOP is doing some of that, I think it is. Because it was something that we really tried to focus on back in the day. I remember bringing in some Republicans to the forum, and they got asked tough questions. I also remember Democrats getting asked tough questions. When I was there the Occupy movement was going on. And so there was actually the Occupy movement in Harvard Yard. And a couple times we had occupiers disrupt the speeches. And then other times we actually had occupiers on this forum stage talking about why they were participating and what they hoped to gain from that particular effort. I think that Harvard and any other university could definitely benefit from having more open conversations, where folks can feel more comfortable and learn from one another.
One of the primary roles of the Board of Overseers is to periodically assess Harvard’s schools and departments. What do you see as the key challenges and opportunities for growth in Harvard’s current academic environment?
I’ll go back to the very first question you asked about finances. Unfortunately, that’s not academic, but it impacts academics. That first question you asked me, that’d be a question I’d want to ask the leaders of the schools. Harvard’s not just the oldest school in America. It’s, you know, we want it to remain and be the best university in the world, with the highest level research, and great teaching and learning. And so, how are they going to prioritize the balancing of the budget with the academic curricula?
Some of the graduate schools may have some growth opportunities. I know that the Business School and the Kennedy School in particular have embraced executive education as a way to generate funds. But you also don’t want to cheapen the brand. You don’t want to put Harvard’s name on something that’s not world class. And so that would be another question I would want to ask. I don’t want anybody getting a Harvard credential to not be getting anything other than a world class education. And if the answer is we’re not offering that, then we shouldn’t do it. We shouldn’t just be grabbing money for that reason, because that’s the kind of thing that just cheapens what people think of the school.
Every school is going to look a little bit different. FAS, I think, is the one that has the largest structural deficit, and it’s the one that certainly gets the headlines. I don’t know about the financial institutions in other parts of the school. That might be school specific.
In recent months, the University has had to reckon with its ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein, who donated over $9 million to the University, which helped fund one of its departments. With that in mind, what are your thoughts on Harvard’s current donation policy?
One of the challenges that Harvard’s going to have in trying to get out of this financial situation, is that it doesn’t chase money from places where it shouldn’t. From what I’ve read about, there was certainly some money that seemed to come in after he seemed like a bad dude. I think the University has to look inward to make sure that you’re not selling yourself out.
Going back to the earlier question, you cheapen the brand with credentials that aren’t worthy of the name, you also cheapen the school by taking money that you shouldn’t take. One of Harvard’s problems is the way that people, especially people in my part of the country, where there are not a lot of alums from Harvard or similar institutions, a lot of what they hear about schools like Harvard and Ivies and other similar schools is second hand information. A big challenge that Harvard has is, when the Epstein scandal breaks, they’re not shocked that Epstein gave money to Harvard. They believe in these theories, that there’s this group of people that just acts differently, acts like the rules don’t apply to them. The Epstein scandal plays right into that.
That’s part of what the Trump administration has been able to play into with its aggressiveness. So we as a university need to not chase cheap money. That will probably make the financial situation harder, but that’s just got to be the way it is, because you can see the black eye that we’ve gotten.
And I know Larry Summers, his office was right around the corner from mine. I’m really disappointed in Larry, and Larry when I was at the IOP, he was great with students. Brilliant. Been at Harvard a long, long time. Just reading about that just makes Harvard look bad. Whether it’s the donations or the involvement, we have to be better than that.
I don’t know what the specific policies are, but there needs to be some sort of process in place to make sure that you’re not taking something that you shouldn’t be taking. It worked informally with the IOP, where somebody made that outreach and we quickly figured out that was not money that we wanted to receive.
In a similar vein, we’ve heard calls for consequences for association with Epstein, including revocation of tenure. When, if ever, should tenure &emdash; or for that matter, University professorship &emdash; be revoked?
Tenure is really important. Tenure protects the academic freedom of the faculty to research and speak and teach what they want, and it’s one of the things the administration is trying to infringe upon.
University professorships are Harvard’s highest honor. If I’m thinking about sort of tiering punishments, it seems like that’s an easier one to lose than tenure. I would just be kind of curious, from a faculty standpoint. It is tricky because not everything’s as clear cut as Epstein. He’s just a bad dude and, even after it was obvious, people still engaged with him. A lot of these are tougher calls, and that’s probably where something like a faculty senate ought to play a role. All of these things hurt Harvard’s ability to achieve its goal. And so we probably do need some procedures, or, very minimum, some conversations about what to do in these kinds of situations.
Larry, to his credit, went ahead and stepped down on his own, obviously under pressure, but by doing it on his own, we didn’t have to worry about a big fight over that. This could be a good role for the Board of Overseers to come in and ask the questions as outsiders. That’s kind of our role, to know more than a typical alum. And we have, I think, five meetings a year, and we do deep dives on two of the schools. And so we know a lot.
We don’t know as much because we’re not fiduciary so we’re not as engaged in the Corporation. We’re also maybe not in the cocoon of the Corporation. Sometimes you get in the middle of that, you sort of lose track of what is going on on the outside. And so a well-functioning Board of Overseers, I think could help in trying to ask the right questions about how to do that, because the reality is something like that’s probably going to repeat itself, and it would be good to be in a better position next time.