Harvard’s President Should Quit Talking About How “Divided” It Is

The issue isn’t so much division, it’s delusion

Alan Garber (at left, facing crowd) in Harvard Yard, speaking at an April 2023 event where the Jewish community brought an Auschwitz-style cattle car to campus in a desperate attempt to bring attention to the gathering threat of antisemitism.

When Alan Garber took over as interim president of Harvard, one of his first communications was a January 8, 2024, email that said, “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.”

Now Garber is kicking off the 2024-2025 academic year, and in an interview with the Harvard Gazette, which is published by Harvard’s central administration, he says, “The most challenging aspect of the moment we face now is that our community is divided.”

Two thirds of a year later, again with the division language. I confess I find Garber’s comment puzzling. I have doubts that it is an accurate description of the challenge at Harvard.  

For one thing, in the rest of the interview, Garber professes support for diversity. When it comes to “institutional voice,” Garber says, “it is hoped that we will open more space for our students, faculty, and other members of our community to express a range of views on the topics of the day — and discuss and debate them in constructive ways.”

When it comes to the Supreme Court ruling limiting the use of race as a factor in Harvard admissions, Garber insists, “Exposure to a wide range of views, backgrounds, and experiences leads to learning and growth, and our commitment to diversity across many dimensions — demographic, socioeconomic, life experience, ideological, and many others — benefits every member of our community.”

If Garber and Harvard are as committed to diversity as they claim, the “divided” nature of the community would be a success, not a challenge. He says he wants a range of views and that ideological and demographic diversity is a benefit—well, he’s got it.

The lack of specificity about what is dividing the community and how lets readers fill in the gaps themselves with speculation.

Does Garber mean that Harvard is genuinely divided over whether October 7, 2023, was an abhorrent terrorist attack or a praiseworthy effort at Palestinian national liberation against Zionist settler-colonial occupation? Does Garber mean that Harvard is genuinely divided over whether the Hamas terrorists were morally justified in kidnapping and murdering Hersh Goldberg-Polin?