Alan Garber was installed as Harvard’s 31st president in a celebration attended by colleagues, University leaders, and family and friends Saturday at the Harvard Art Museums.
Provost for almost 13 years, Garber was named president in August, after serving as interim leader since January, and has navigated the University through a period of extraordinary challenges and intense scrutiny. Penny Pritzker, senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation, pointed to Garber’s character and experience in praising him for meeting the moment.
The University’s new president “is a person of deep learning, strong values, bedrock integrity, and a fierce commitment to academic excellence,” she said.
Garber, an economist, physician, and health policy scholar, opened his remarks by thanking those in attendance, including his wife and children, for preparing him for his new role. Among those gathered for the ceremony were past Harvard presidents Larry Summers, Drew Faust, Larry Bacow, and Claudine Gay.
“Nothing fortifies quite like a room full of colleagues and dear friends, including my partners in the work and my predecessors in the Holyoke chair,” he said. “This is, in some ways, an inverted lecture. Each of you has taught me important lessons that have guided me to this point.”
He went on to note that the University is facing uncertain times that will require both robust collaboration and an unwavering commitment to integrity and excellence, including in its pursuit of the research and teaching that define its mission. Success will depend in part on embracing risk, he said.
President Garber holding the ceremonial copy of the Harvard Charter with Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker (left) and President Emerita Drew Faust.
The Holyoke chair.
President Garber with his wife, Anne Yahanda, and their four children.
“An excessive aversion to risk is a risk in and of itself. We must keep in mind, always, that the mistakes we have made — individually and collectively — may have been plentiful, but we have our long history to celebrate because they have not been fatal. Assuming that this trend continues, our history demands that we plan — boldly — for a very long future. We need to think not only in years and decades, but also in centuries.”
He added: “We forfeit opportunities when we feel as though the University cannot make a move without considering every possible ramification, without fully understanding every possible consequence. In a world that confronts us with challenges and opportunities more frequently than ever before, we will need to move forward with greater alacrity — and to correct course more quickly — than has been our custom.”
Faust, who as president named Garber provost in 2011, recruiting him from Stanford University, described a colleague whose hunger for knowledge is deep and inspiring.
“Alan is interested in everything, curious about everything … he is an intellectual and a practitioner, a thinker and a doer,” she said, nodding to Garber’s experience in medicine, economics, and policy, as well as his love for the arts and humanities. “At a time when trust in institutions generally, and in higher education in particular, has eroded so markedly, Alan radiates trustworthiness.”
William F. Lee, who preceded Pritzker as senior fellow of the Corporation, praised Garber as a leader of “unflappability and humility” who has demonstrated a “fundamental and unwavering determination to advance the best interests of the institution and the broader Harvard community.”
Vivian Y. Hunt, president of the Board of Overseers, said that Garber’s long record of contributions to the University reflects his strengths as a person and a leader.
“Since being formally elected to this presidency this summer, you continued to carry the mantle of leadership with humility, heart, spirit, humor, resilience, and resolve,” Hunt said.
The ceremony included the presentation by Garber’s predecessors of several insignia of the office. Dating to the 17th century, the insignia are traditionally given to each new Harvard president. Faust said that the tradition was not just an opportunity for Garber to pledge his leadership to the community, but also for the community to pledge its support to him.
“It’s a ritual that encompasses all of us, not just the man of honor,” said Faust, the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor. “We affirm our support for Alan as he embarks on his presidency, and as he navigates through change and through storm. And we pledge our commitment to doing all we can to ensure that Harvard thrives and the pursuit of veritas prevails in the decades and the centuries to come.”
The impact of that commitment extends far beyond campus, Garber noted, citing the promise of young scientists, pioneering research by recent Nobel laureates, and the service of Harvard veterans.
“The work done at Harvard — the good it does in the world — the good it will do in the world — is wonderfully abundant,” he said.
The ceremony concluded with a benediction by Rabbi William G. Hamilton of Congregation Kehillath Israel and the singing of “Fair Harvard” by Carolyn Y. Hao ’26.
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