Bacow to step down as Harvard’s president after five years

Lawrence S. Bacow, who led Harvard University by way of the pandemic and used additional than 50 a long time finding out, educating at and presiding more than 3 key universities in the Boston area, announced Wednesday that he would action down as Harvard’s president following summer season.

“There is by no means a great time to leave a job like this 1, but now appears to be appropriate to me,” Bacow explained in a geared up statement. “Through our collective initiatives, we have identified our way through the pandemic. We have labored with each other to maintain Harvard by way of transform and by way of storm, and collectively we have created Harvard improved and stronger in innumerable strategies.”

When Bacow stepped down as president of Tufts University, in 2016, he explained a ten years as the best size of a presidency. “I have frequently reported that 10 decades is about the right time period for a college president. It is extended adequate for 1 personal to have a considerable affect but not so lengthy that the institution, or the president, gets to be comfortable.”

Bacow will go away Harvard just after a presidential stint about 50 percent as extensive, but that interval involved two full several years of the COVID-19 pandemic, every single of which arguably counts as a few. (He also used 7 preceding yrs as a member of the Harvard Corporation, the university’s primary governing human body.)

Throughout that interval, the college sued to block a federal policy that would have prevented global learners from dwelling in the U.S. if their coursework would be mainly on-line, as it inevitably would be. “Larry instantly identified the harm this would cause not only to unique learners but to the complete concept of global instruction,” Bacow’s counterpart at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologies, Rafael Reif, explained in a launch. “The simple fact that the plan was reversed the next 7 days is a testomony to the power of his argument.”

Bacow also has led Harvard’s effort and hard work to defend its affirmative action policy in opposition to constitutional problem. A federal appeals court docket in 2020 identified no evidence of discrimination against Asian American applicants in upholding Harvard’s coverage, but quite a few assume the U.S. Supreme Court docket to come across fault with the university’s guidelines when it hears an enchantment in the tumble.

Between other highlights of Bacow’s tenure at Harvard, as included by Inside Greater Ed:

• The university declared that it would phase out its expense in fossil fuels. “Climate transform is the most consequential threat dealing with humanity. The very last several months have laid at our ft undeniable proof of the entire world to come—massive fires that eat overall towns, unparalleled flooding that inundates key urban places, document heat waves and drought that devastate food items provides and increase water scarcity,” Bacow wrote. “We should act now as citizens, as scholars, and as an institution to handle this disaster on as numerous fronts as we have at our disposal.”
• Harvard pledged $100 million this spring to make amends for its historic ties to slavery. “The truth is that slavery performed a significant part in our institutional heritage,” Bacow wrote. “Enslaved folks worked on our campus supporting our learners, school, and staff, like a number of Harvard presidents. The labor of enslaved persons equally far and around enriched many donors and, ultimately, the establishment.”
• The university significantly expanded its analysis into urgent troubles in modern society, like a new centre for the analyze of pure and synthetic intelligence and a new heart for towns.

In advance of becoming appointed Harvard’s president, Bacow put in 10 yrs as president of Tufts College, in Medford, Mass., and 24 several years as a school member and administrator at MIT.

The son of immigrants, he attended college at MIT and then acquired three levels from Harvard, such as a Ph.D. in public plan. His scholarly get the job done has bundled environmental coverage, bargaining and negotiation, economics, law, general public policy, and increased schooling.