Dear members of the Harvard community,
We write with great sadness in light of President Claudine Gay's message announcing her intention to step down from the presidency and resume her faculty position at Harvard.
First and foremost, we thank President Gay for her deep and unwavering commitment to Harvard and her pursuit of academic excellence. During her long and distinguished leadership as Dean of Social Sciences and then as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences – where she deftly led the FAS through the COVID-19 pandemic and pursued ambitious new academic initiatives in areas such as quantum science and inequality – she has proven the insight, determination and empathy that are her hallmarks. She believes passionately in Harvard's mission of education and research and cares deeply about the talents, ideas and energy that drive Harvard. She has dedicated her career to an institution whose ideals and priorities she has tirelessly advanced, and we are grateful for the extraordinary contributions she has made and will continue to make as a leader, teacher, scholar, mentor. and an inspiration for many.
We also thank Alan M. Garber, Provost and Chief Academic Officer, who has served in this role with distinction for the past twelve years—and who has agreed to serve as interim president until a new leader for Harvard is identified and takes office begins. An economist and physician, he is a distinguished and versatile scholar with appointments at Harvard Medical School, the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. We are fortunate to have someone with Alan's broad and deep experience, astute judgment, collaborative style and exceptional institutional knowledge to advance key priorities and guide the University through this transition period.
In recent months, Harvard and higher education have faced a number of ongoing and unprecedented challenges. In the face of escalating controversy and conflict, President Gay and the Fellows have sought to be guided by the best interests of the institution, whose future progress and well-being we are collectively committed to. Her own message eloquently expressing her intention to step down underscores what those who have worked with her have long known: her commitment to the institution and its mission is deep and selfless. Based on this overarching consideration, we have accepted her resignation.
We do this with sadness. While President Gay has acknowledged and taken responsibility for missteps, it is also true that she has demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of deeply personal and sustained attacks. While some of this took place in public, much of it took the form of vile and in some cases racist hate speech directed at her in nefarious emails and phone calls. We condemn such attacks in the strongest possible terms.
The search for a new president of the university will begin in due course. We will continue to communicate about the process, which will include broad engagement and consultation with the Harvard community in the coming period.
As we conclude today, we would like to once again thank President Gay for her dedicated service to Harvard and Provost Garber for his willingness to lead the university during the coming transition period. We also thank you all for your continued commitment to Harvard's important educational and research mission – and to its core values of excellence, inclusivity, and free research and expression. At a time when conflict and division are so widespread in our country and our world, it has never been more important to embrace and advance this mission in the spirit of common purpose. We live in difficult and troubling times and there are enormous challenges ahead of us. May our community, with its long history of rising through change and storm, find new ways to meet these challenges together and reaffirm Harvard's commitment to generating knowledge, searching for truth, and contributing through science and education to a better world.
The Fellows of Harvard College
Penny Pritzker, Senior Fellow
Timothy R. Barakett, Treasurer
Kenneth I Chenault
Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuellar
Paul J Finnegan
Biddy Martin
Karen Gordon Mills
Diana L. Nelson
Tracy P. Palandjian
Shirley M Tilghman
Theodore V. Wells, Jr.