Alan Garber was put in as Harvard’s thirty first president in a celebration attended by colleagues, College leaders, and household and buddies Saturday on the Harvard Artwork Museums.
Provost for nearly 13 years, Garber was named president in August, after serving as interim chief since January, and has navigated the College via a interval of extraordinary challenges and intense scrutiny. Penny Pritzker, senior fellow of the Harvard Company, pointed to Garber’s character and expertise in praising him for assembly the second.
The College’s new president “is an individual of deep studying, robust values, bedrock integrity, and a fierce dedication to tutorial excellence,” she stated.
Garber, an economist, doctor, and well being coverage scholar, opened his remarks by thanking these in attendance, together with his spouse and kids, for making ready him for his new position. Amongst these gathered for the ceremony have been previous Harvard presidents Larry Summers, Drew Faust, Larry Bacow, and Claudine Homosexual.
“Nothing fortifies fairly like a room filled with colleagues and expensive buddies, together with my companions within the work and my predecessors within the Holyoke chair,” he stated. “That is, in some methods, an inverted lecture. Every of you has taught me vital classes which have guided me thus far.”
He went on to notice that the College is dealing with unsure occasions that may require each strong collaboration and an unwavering dedication to integrity and excellence, together with in its pursuit of the analysis and educating that outline its mission. Success will rely partially on embracing danger, he stated.
President Garber holding the ceremonial copy of the Harvard Constitution with Harvard Company Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker (left) and President Emerita Drew Faust.
The Holyoke chair.
President Garber together with his spouse, Anne Yahanda, and their 4 youngsters.
“An extreme aversion to danger is a danger in and of itself. We should take into account, at all times, that the errors we’ve made — individually and collectively — might have been plentiful, however we’ve our lengthy historical past to have fun as a result of they haven’t been deadly. Assuming that this development continues, our historical past calls for that we plan — boldly — for a really lengthy future. We have to suppose not solely in years and a long time, but additionally in centuries.”
He added: “We forfeit alternatives after we really feel as if the College can’t make a transfer with out contemplating each doable ramification, with out totally understanding each doable consequence. In a world that confronts us with challenges and alternatives extra often than ever earlier than, we might want to transfer ahead with larger alacrity — and to right course extra rapidly — than has been our customized.”
Faust, who as president named Garber provost in 2011, recruiting him from Stanford College, described a colleague whose starvation for information is deep and galvanizing.
“Alan is thinking about all the pieces, inquisitive about all the pieces … he’s an mental and a practitioner, a thinker and a doer,” she stated, nodding to Garber’s expertise in medication, economics, and coverage, in addition to his love for the humanities and humanities. “At a time when belief in establishments usually, and in greater schooling specifically, has eroded so markedly, Alan radiates trustworthiness.”
William F. Lee, who preceded Pritzker as senior fellow of the Company, praised Garber as a pacesetter of “unflappability and humility” who has demonstrated a “elementary and unwavering dedication to advance the perfect pursuits of the establishment and the broader Harvard neighborhood.”
Vivian Y. Hunt, president of the Board of Overseers, stated that Garber’s lengthy file of contributions to the College displays his strengths as an individual and a pacesetter.
“Since being formally elected to this presidency this summer season, you continued to hold the mantle of management with humility, coronary heart, spirit, humor, resilience, and resolve,” Hunt stated.
The ceremony included the presentation by Garber’s predecessors of a number of insignia of the workplace. Relationship to the seventeenth century, the insignia are historically given to every new Harvard president. Faust stated that the custom was not simply a possibility for Garber to pledge his management to the neighborhood, but additionally for the neighborhood to pledge its help to him.
“It’s a ritual that encompasses all of us, not simply the person of honor,” stated Faust, the Arthur Kingsley Porter College Professor. “We affirm our help for Alan as he embarks on his presidency, and as he navigates via change and thru storm. And we pledge our dedication to doing all we are able to to make sure that Harvard thrives and the pursuit of veritas prevails within the a long time and the centuries to return.”
The influence of that dedication extends far past campus, Garber famous, citing the promise of younger scientists, pioneering analysis by current Nobel laureates, and the service of Harvard veterans.
“The work finished at Harvard — the nice it does on this planet — the nice it will do on this planet — is splendidly ample,” he stated.
The ceremony concluded with a benediction by Rabbi William G. Hamilton of Congregation Kehillath Israel and the singing of “Honest Harvard” by Carolyn Y. Hao ’26.
