Harvard’s Alan Garber said in his first public message as Harvard’s interim president that the school has been through an “extraordinarily painful” period with more tension than at any time in the last four decades.
“Since I first arrived here as an undergraduate in 1973, I cannot recall a period of comparable tension on our campus and across our community,” Garber said in a statement to the campus community on Monday.
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Garber, Harvard’s provost, was named interim president on Jan. 2 after Claudine Gay resigned after only six months, the second half of which was plagued by criticism over antisemitism on campus and later on plagiarism in her early research work.
In his message, Garber described Harvard’s recent days as “extraordinarily painful and disorienting.” He cited questions about how the college addresses antisemitism and other hate speech while also balancing free speech.
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“We have been subjected to an unrelenting focus on fault lines that divide us, which has tested the ties that bind us as a community devoted to learning from one another,” he said.
