Speaker 1: The oldest university of the United States is Harvard University.
Speaker 1: It's also one of the most respected universities of the United States,
Speaker 1: but recently there's been some challenges by the federal government
Speaker 1: the way Harvard is operating. I had a chance recently
Speaker 1: to sit down with Alan Garber, the president of Harvard University,
Speaker 1: to talk about the challenge of the federal government now
Speaker 1: faces and the challenges of American higher education. Harvard is
Speaker 1: the America's oldest university, founded in sixteen thirty six. It's
Speaker 1: very famous university, maybe the most famous university in the world.
Speaker 1: But recently it's been in the news because Harvard sued
Speaker 1: the federal government, which was a very unusual thing for
Speaker 1: Harvard to do. Why did Harvard sue the federal government
Speaker 1: and what's the status of that case.
Speaker 2: I can only tell you a little bit about the
Speaker 2: status of the case except what's publicly known, which is
Speaker 2: that we received a favorable law of judgment in district court.
Speaker 2: And I think you're referring to the lawsuit in which
Speaker 2: we alleged First Amendment violations as well as procedural violations
Speaker 2: by the federal government when they cut off our funding
Speaker 2: and we sued because they cut off our funding. We
Speaker 2: should be very clear about that. It was done in
Speaker 2: a precipitous manner without any real process. We really had
Speaker 2: no choice because we had hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 2: at stake. And I want to point out one other thing.
Speaker 2: This was not in the form of gifts or subsidies.
Speaker 2: It was payment for research that we were performing at
Speaker 2: the behest of the federal government. We were fulfilling our
Speaker 2: obligations under the terms of the grants and contracts that
Speaker 2: the federal government issued.
Speaker 3: So how much money was frozen.
Speaker 2: It's a little bit hard to be precise, but on
Speaker 2: the order of six hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1: Six hundred million was frozen. Some of that has now
Speaker 1: come back to Harvard or yes, So to make up
Speaker 1: the gap, is Harvard getting that money and giving it
Speaker 1: to the people doing the research out of its own funds,
Speaker 1: or you have special fundraising, or how do you make
Speaker 1: up the gap.
Speaker 2: There was a long period in which we did not
Speaker 2: have the funding, and the Central University used its resources
Speaker 2: to help the investigators continue at least some of their work,
Speaker 2: not all of the work could be funded by the
Speaker 2: university and the schools that are part of the university.
Speaker 2: What's important to recognize is that there was very critical
Speaker 2: work that could not be stopped, but we could not
Speaker 2: really afford to make up for all of the loss
Speaker 2: money from the federal government.
Speaker 1: Now people sometimes say, well, Harvard has an endowment that's
Speaker 1: let's say, over fifty billion dollars, so you have plenty
Speaker 1: of money. Why couldn't you just take some of that
Speaker 1: fifty billion dollars in use it for the research.
Speaker 2: Well, of course, the endowment is a very important source
Speaker 2: of revenue. One thing that it is important to realize
Speaker 2: about the endowment is that it's heavily restricted. So, for example,
Speaker 2: we have funds to pay for individual professorships, we have
Speaker 2: funds that are dedicated to a particular research center. Funds
Speaker 2: of that kind they cannot be used for other purposes.
Speaker 2: So that's one restriction that makes it very hard to
Speaker 2: treat this like some giant piggybank where we can take
Speaker 2: out funds when we need them on a rainy day.
Speaker 2: There is a second consideration as well, which is that
Speaker 2: most of the terms under which people gave money for
Speaker 2: the endowment include an obligation that this should be sustainable,
Speaker 2: and what that really means is that future generations should
Speaker 2: have access to the same resources that we have today,
Speaker 2: so that limits how rapidly you can spend from the endowment.
Speaker 1: There's an endowment tax that was put in under the
Speaker 1: first Trump administration and it was increased in this current administration.
Speaker 1: Do you see any real justification for that tax and
Speaker 1: is it impacting Harvard adversely or other schools like Harvard
Speaker 1: the endowment text.
Speaker 2: Clearly, it's a substantial text, particularly for universities like Harvard
Speaker 2: that are expected to be in the top tier. And
Speaker 2: of course it's damaging because, for example, so much of
Speaker 2: our financial aid, the scholarships that we give our students
Speaker 2: are funded through the endowment, and it funds the research,
Speaker 2: it funds all kinds of activities in the university. So yes,
Speaker 2: it's quite damaging in terms of addressing the problems that
Speaker 2: we are accused of, and that I believe was part
Speaker 2: of the rationale for passing the endowment text. The tax
Speaker 2: is only going to make it harder to address these issues,
Speaker 2: not easier.
Speaker 1: In the early days, Harvard and most universities and I say,
Speaker 1: didn't get money from the federal government. After World War Two,
Speaker 1: the federal government dramatically increased amount of money given to
Speaker 1: universities for research. Do you think that was a good
Speaker 1: thing for the US government to do that, and you
Speaker 1: think the universities became too dependent on the federal government,
Speaker 1: or you think they benefited and it's really been good
Speaker 1: for the country to do this.
Speaker 2: The period that you're referring to was really set into
Speaker 2: motion by a report by Vineva Bush, who had written
Speaker 2: a book called The Endless Frontier, and he argued that
Speaker 2: it would be more efficient for the federal government to
Speaker 2: support research by working with universities than pursuing more of
Speaker 2: a European style model where there would be independent research
Speaker 2: institutes the federal government would pay for everything. That's what
Speaker 2: set in motion what became a real boom in innovation
Speaker 2: in science and technology in the United States. I would
Speaker 2: add that in addition to the funding that went to
Speaker 2: universities to conduct research, the country benefited from an influx
Speaker 2: of immigrants who are some of the greatest scientists in
Speaker 2: the world, largely in the post war period, and actually
Speaker 2: during the war and just before the war, largely European scientists.
Speaker 2: That combination made the US the world leader in science
Speaker 2: and technology.
Speaker 1: Well in the early part of the twentieth century. If
Speaker 1: one were to say what were the greatest universities in
Speaker 1: the world, the United States might not have had the
Speaker 1: top universities. Is that because the federal government has been
Speaker 1: supporting and also because the endowments have grown.
Speaker 2: I would say it's solid the above. But I would
Speaker 2: also say that we have had, over the past many
Speaker 2: decades a relentless focus on attracting the best talent in
Speaker 2: the entire world. It takes resources, but the resources not
Speaker 2: only financial. The resources are human resources. And we have
Speaker 2: done an amazing job in attracting great talent from all
Speaker 2: of the world. So that combination is what enabled the
Speaker 2: US to be so successful.
Speaker 1: Harvard was sued for discriminating on admissions ultimately went to
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. Supreme Court ruled against Harvard. How has
Speaker 1: Harvard changed its admissions policies to conform with what the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court now says as the law.
Speaker 2: Well, we had announced in the first official communication upon
Speaker 2: the release of the Supreme Court's decision that we would
Speaker 2: adhere to the law, not change our values and principles,
Speaker 2: but we would certainly adhere to the law. The specific
Speaker 2: measures that we've taken have been many. We've made sure
Speaker 2: that in the admissions process, nobody involved in making a
Speaker 2: decision about admissions has access to the check the box
Speaker 2: what's your race, what's your ethnicity, etc. So they don't
Speaker 2: have access to that information. Of course, there's an interview
Speaker 2: in an essay, aspects of identity will come out, but
Speaker 2: we do not have We do not provide that information
Speaker 2: to the admissions officers where people identify, and I would
Speaker 2: add that we train them to make sure that they
Speaker 2: don't consider these characteristics that are prohibited from consideration in
Speaker 2: through the SFFA decision.
Speaker 1: You're talking about immigrants and how the major universities have
Speaker 1: brought a lot of immigrants over and they were great
Speaker 1: faculty members and researchers. What about getting foreign students today
Speaker 1: to American universities. Do you actually feel that foreign students
Speaker 1: are now afraid to apply because of visa problems or
Speaker 1: they think they won't get in because there's going to
Speaker 1: be some discrimination against foreign students. How has the whole
Speaker 1: concern and watching about foreign students and foreign faculty affected
Speaker 1: at Harvard.
Speaker 2: For many programs, there is a lot of hesitancy about
Speaker 2: initiate about attending college or attending graduate school in the
Speaker 2: US because of uncertainty about visa status and whether that
Speaker 2: could be taken away. At the same time, this year
Speaker 2: we've had a lot of success and the students who
Speaker 2: were actually admitted virtually from other countries, virtually all of
Speaker 2: them have been able to attend. So it's too early
Speaker 2: to have a confident answer your question, but we are worried,
Speaker 2: and I want to say one other thing. They aren't
Speaker 2: strictly speaking students, but postdocts. That is, the postdoctoral fellows
Speaker 2: who work in our labs, in the hospitals and in
Speaker 2: other parts of the university. There is some evidence that
Speaker 2: fewer of them are applying for jobs in the US.
Speaker 1: The hostages have now come back in Israel, but it
Speaker 1: was the events that led to the hostage being taken
Speaker 1: and all the people who were killed on Over the
Speaker 1: seventh that led to protests on campuses. Harvard and other
Speaker 1: universities had encampments and other types of protests. What has
Speaker 1: Harvard done since that time to address the concerns that
Speaker 1: some people have that Harvard was not sufficiently dealing with
Speaker 1: anti Semitism, or that Harvard's ability to let people protest
Speaker 1: wasn't appropriate.
Speaker 3: How have you changed things, if at all.
Speaker 2: We've done a lot to address these issues. And one
Speaker 2: of the challenges we face from beginning concerning the protests
Speaker 2: is that people claimed that our rules were unclear what's
Speaker 2: permissible in a protest, and so one of the first
Speaker 2: things we did is to develop a set of guidelines.
Speaker 2: Basically that drew upon a document called the University Statement
Speaker 2: on Rights and Responsibilities, which is created in the early seventies.
Speaker 2: That outlined how we protect protests but also enabled the
Speaker 2: of our community to carry on their work without disruption.
Speaker 2: So we provided some clarity there for anti Semitism and
Speaker 2: also for the complaints that we heard about anti Muslim,
Speaker 2: anti Arab, anti Palestinian incidents. I created two presidential task
Speaker 2: forces to study the issues and make a set of recommendations.
Speaker 2: Both of those task forces took their work very seriously.
Speaker 2: It took a lot of time, but they gathered data,
Speaker 2: they did hundreds upon hundreds of interviews, and then they
Speaker 2: came up with a very lengthy set of recommendations, which
Speaker 2: we have implemented. We're well on the way to implement those.
Speaker 1: So you're the thirty first president of Harvard University. You
Speaker 1: were Harvard undergraduate. Did you ever think when you were
Speaker 1: Harvard undergraduated you wind up as president university someday.
Speaker 2: Well, back those days, we would have said, what are
Speaker 2: you smoking.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about your background for a moment. Where were
Speaker 1: you born.
Speaker 2: In Illinois, Western Illinois.
Speaker 1: And your parents were they Harvard graduates?
Speaker 2: Well, my father didn't go to college and my mother
Speaker 2: went to the University of Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: So when you're growing up, did people say, Helen is
Speaker 1: really really smart, he should go to Harvard. Did you
Speaker 1: always think you were really talented as an academic kid
Speaker 1: in high school and you knew you were going to
Speaker 1: get into Harvard.
Speaker 2: If people said I was a really talented kid and
Speaker 2: I should go to Harvard, they didn't say it to me. Okay,
Speaker 2: I was a good student.
Speaker 3: What class were you at Harvard?
Speaker 2: Well, I entered with the class of nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 2: so I started in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 3: Were any prominent people in your class?
Speaker 2: It may sound like I'm bragging. There are a lot
Speaker 2: of alumni here in the audience, and I bet every
Speaker 2: one of them is proud of their class. But here
Speaker 2: let me brag about my classmates. The person whose face
Speaker 2: was beneath mine in the freshman Facebook was Bill Gates?
Speaker 3: What happened to him? He dropped out? Dropped out?
Speaker 1: When he dropped out, you'd think you ever hear of
Speaker 1: him again?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd say.
Speaker 2: Some of us have heard from him. Steve Baumber, the
Speaker 2: Chief Justice Supreme Court, John Roberts, a pretty good class
Speaker 2: other university presidents. There's a lot of Moia names in.
Speaker 1: So it normally takes four years to graduate from college.
Speaker 1: How many years did it take you?
Speaker 2: Three?
Speaker 3: Three?
Speaker 1: So you after three years, what do you decide you
Speaker 1: want to do? You go to graduate school? Do you
Speaker 1: want to do something important like private equity, going to
Speaker 1: business school?
Speaker 3: Or you didn't want to do that? What did you
Speaker 3: want to do? Well?
Speaker 2: I couldn't make up my mind. So I did. I
Speaker 2: did a PhD in economics and an MD.
Speaker 1: PhD in economics and an MD. But the PhD economics
Speaker 1: was at Harvard, the MD was at Stanford. So wasn't
Speaker 1: that by coastal a little bit difficult?
Speaker 2: I had a great experience studying economics at Harvard. I
Speaker 2: had done enough for the graduate courses at Harvard and
Speaker 2: that I could shorten the time it took to get
Speaker 2: a PhD. And what I learned in the applications process
Speaker 2: is that other PhD programs would not recognize they would
Speaker 2: not give me credit for the Harvard courses.
Speaker 1: So you got an MD from Stanford, a PhD from Harvard.
Speaker 1: What led you back to Stanford? You taught at Stanford,
Speaker 1: is that right?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: For twenty five years?
Speaker 1: Twenty five years. So you're living in California. The weather
Speaker 1: is very good, it's a beautiful campus. What propelled you
Speaker 1: after twenty five years to come back to the East
Speaker 1: Coast to be the provost at Harvard.
Speaker 2: Well, I think a lot of people in this audience
Speaker 2: know Drew Faust, and let me just tell you she's
Speaker 2: a very persuasive person. And I was chair of the
Speaker 2: committee to visit the Harvard Medical School and Harvard School
Speaker 2: of Dental Medicine. That's how I met Drew, and it
Speaker 2: brought me back here about once a year. And it
Speaker 2: was through that that I met her and she asked
Speaker 2: me if i'd be interested in looking at the job
Speaker 2: of provost when it opened up. My initial answer was no,
Speaker 2: but somehow she got me to change.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you came back as provost and Drew Faust
Speaker 1: and then when Drew retired, Larry backhow became the president
Speaker 1: of Harvard and you stayed as the provost, that's right.
Speaker 1: And then when Claudine Gay became the president of Harvard,
Speaker 1: you stayed as the provost. So how many years were
Speaker 1: you the provost at Harvard?
Speaker 2: Twelve and a half.
Speaker 1: And for people that don't know what a provost is,
Speaker 1: what actually do you do when you're a provost?
Speaker 2: The provost is the number two officer of the university
Speaker 2: and the chief academic officer at Harvard. It's a relatively
Speaker 2: new role. There was a provost briefly at the end
Speaker 2: of World War Two because President Conant was in Washington,
Speaker 2: was kind of around the university, very temporary arrangement, but
Speaker 2: it really started in modern times in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: It's a job that expanded pretty much monotonically over time.
Speaker 2: And when I took on the job, the provost was
Speaker 2: responsible for all of the inter faculty initiatives. The deans
Speaker 2: reported to both the president and the provost, and the
Speaker 2: provosts had a huge role in faculty appointments and promotion.
Speaker 1: And Claudingay stepped down as president, you were put in
Speaker 1: as the interim president of Harvard, and now you're the
Speaker 1: president of Harvard. What's the pleasure of being the president
Speaker 1: of Harvard.
Speaker 2: I was asked on January first to step in as
Speaker 2: interim president on January second, and I knew that being
Speaker 2: provost was a pretty demanding job pretty much twenty four
Speaker 2: to seven and I was about to do two jobs.
Speaker 2: There were twenty four to seven until I could put
Speaker 2: a new provost in place. So there's just the sheer
Speaker 2: volume of work was daunting. And then there's the fact
Speaker 2: that we were in a crisis that we were under
Speaker 2: at Tech. My answer in normal times would be, these
Speaker 2: are the advantages of being president. This is what's annoying.
Speaker 2: What I learned by serving in this time is that
Speaker 2: serving in a time of crisis, I believe is far
Speaker 2: more rewarding than serving in normal times. And it's rewarding
Speaker 2: because you can really make a difference. There is no
Speaker 2: time like the president to do the job.
Speaker 1: In the early days of the country, there were a
Speaker 1: few private universities. They were all private pretty much in
Speaker 1: the early days. But in recent years Harvard has in
Speaker 1: size and breadth and depth, really going way past the
Speaker 1: other major universities that you could argue what enabled Harvard
Speaker 1: to become such a big university relative that let's say Princeton,
Speaker 1: which is a great university but not quite as broad
Speaker 1: as Harvard. What did Harvard do that enabled it to
Speaker 1: grow to the point where when people say I want
Speaker 1: my smart child to go somewhere, they say, I want
Speaker 1: my child to be able to go to Harvard.
Speaker 2: Well, David, I actually think that the top research universities
Speaker 2: in the US are all incredibly accomplished, and I don't
Speaker 2: feel as though Harvard is so far ahead of any
Speaker 2: other institution. We're stronger in some areas in Princeton, and
Speaker 2: maybe not as strong as others, But the fact is
Speaker 2: we're a very different institution from Princeton because Princeton has
Speaker 2: PhD programs, but they did not invest heavily in professional schools,
Speaker 2: so they're covering a different part of the waterfront. But
Speaker 2: I would say that we've been fortunate in a number
Speaker 2: of ways, including the generosity of our alumni and friends
Speaker 2: has helped us. That's been true for the other pre
Speaker 2: eminent research universities as well.
Speaker 1: Many members of Congress think that Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford,
Speaker 1: other major universities that are well known are too liberal.
Speaker 1: How does Harvard address that, and how do you get
Speaker 1: a faculty that has more people that are not quote liberal?
Speaker 1: And is it really unrealistic to do that?
Speaker 2: I think that the core issue is really a question
Speaker 2: are our students exposed to the full range of serious
Speaker 2: views about important issues. Could be in science, it could
Speaker 2: be in my field of economics, could be in political science,
Speaker 2: in all kinds of areas, and there's a risk if
Speaker 2: the faculty lean all in one direction politically, that they
Speaker 2: won't be capable of presenting views other than their owns,
Speaker 2: and therefore our students won't be exposed. Oftentimes, my professors
Speaker 2: would not reveal what their personal views were. Sometimes they did,
Speaker 2: but it was never with the idea that you would
Speaker 2: say only certain views are correct about this issue. That's
Speaker 2: the problem we have to solve. I think that to
Speaker 2: fully address this, we do need a wider range of
Speaker 2: views on campus. It's not just about liberal conservative, it's
Speaker 2: on all kinds of dimensions. We need a diversity of views,
Speaker 2: we need many different views, and we need to create
Speaker 2: an environment in which our students can speak freely because actually,
Speaker 2: for students, I would say, the most pernicious issue about
Speaker 2: this fear that there's that the faculty are all from
Speaker 2: one part of the political spectrum. The fear is that
Speaker 2: the students who disagree can't express those views or they
Speaker 2: will be ostracized in some way. We have to overcome that,
Speaker 2: and I think we're making progress.
Speaker 1: What percentage of students who come to Harvard College are
Speaker 1: on some kind of scholarship I have, you know, the
Speaker 1: assumption might be that they all are from wealthy families
Speaker 1: or most of them. What percentage actually on some kind
Speaker 1: of scholarship.
Speaker 2: It's on the order of sixty percent receive financial aid.
Speaker 2: And I would add that students from family pollies that
Speaker 2: earn less than two hundred thousand dollars a year can
Speaker 2: attend Harvard College tuition free.
Speaker 1: Speaking of tuition, many people criticize the high tuitions of
Speaker 1: private universities, in particular, saying that they're all very, very high,
Speaker 1: beyond the means of most middle class families.
Speaker 3: Why is tuition so high?
Speaker 2: The cost of providing an education at the kinds of
Speaker 2: universities that you've mentioned have gone up and up over
Speaker 2: time in real terms. For many of our universities, that is,
Speaker 2: inflation adjusted terms, the tuition has gone down and I'm
Speaker 2: talking about the nominal tuition for the students who don't
Speaker 2: receive any financial aid. When you take an account financial aid,
Speaker 2: it's gone down.
Speaker 1: But the cost of educating one of these students that
Speaker 1: you educate, is it.
Speaker 3: Higher than the actual tuition?
Speaker 1: Yes, And you think the American universities today are in
Speaker 1: danger of not becoming as important to the or the
Speaker 1: world as they were ten twenty years ago because of
Speaker 1: challenges to the universities. We still think the university are
Speaker 1: so strong that they can overcome some of the current
Speaker 1: challenges and criticisms.
Speaker 2: I am optimistic about that. But I think is extremely
Speaker 2: important is for Harvard and our peer institutions, for particularly
Speaker 2: other research universities, to re establish trust in our institutions
Speaker 2: and our mission because what we've accomplished really would not
Speaker 2: have been possible without this incredibly successful partnership with the
Speaker 2: federal government, which has driven the research enterprise.
Speaker 1: As I said before, So one final question I want
Speaker 1: to ask you is I have a seven year old
Speaker 1: granddaughter and she's very smart, and I'm just wondering is
Speaker 1: there an early, early, early decision process that Harvard has
Speaker 1: or would you consider starting one. I mean, she's very talented,
Speaker 1: So would you consider early early decision for people of
Speaker 1: that age or not?
Speaker 2: Well, David, I have to ask you, how's her pitching arm?
Speaker 1: It's better than some of the pictures that I have. There,
Speaker 1: you go, maybe she could be on the athletic teams.
Speaker 1: But if you had to do it all over again,
Speaker 1: when they asked you to be the president of Harvard,
Speaker 1: would you have said yes or no?
Speaker 2: I would have said yes with less hesitation.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You
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Speaker 1: wherever you listen.