Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 said the University “went wrong” by allowing professors to inject their personal views into the classroom, arguing that faculty activism had chilled free speech and debate on campus.
In rare and unusually candid remarks on a podcast released on Tuesday, Garber appeared to tie many of higher education’s oft-cited ills — namely, a dearth of tolerance and free debate — to a culture that permits, and at times encourages, professors to foreground their identity and perspectives in teaching.
“How many students would actually be willing to go toe-to-toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?” he said.
The remarks mark Garber’s most explicit public acknowledgement that faculty practices have contributed to a breakdown in open discourse on campus — and that he is committed to backtracking toward neutrality in the classroom.
Garber’s tenure in Massachusetts Hall has been defined by sustained controversy over free speech on campus. He inherited a campus deeply divided over the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel — and facing heavy external criticism for its handling of campus responses in its wake.
In response, Garber has launched a flurry of initiatives aimed at restoring what he has described as a culture of debate. Shortly after he assumed the presidency, Harvard adopted an institutional voice policy that commits the University and its top administrators to refrain from taking official positions on policy issues.
Though Garber has carved some exceptions to the policy — notably when he, in his personal capacity, condemned a Palestine Solidarity Committee post marking the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack — he has increasingly emphasized restraint, particularly in the classroom.
“I’m pleased to say that I think there is real movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you really need to be objective in the classroom,” he said.
Garber’s remarks came during a Dec. 16, 2025 live taping of the Identity/Crisis Podcast, produced by the Shalom Hartman Institute and focused on issues in modern Jewish life. The talk, a conversation with Hartman Institute President Yehuda Kurtzer, took place just one day after Garber’s term as president was extended indefinitely, though the episode did not air until Tuesday.
While the podcast touched on free speech, antisemitism, and protest policy, Kurtzer — who earned his Ph.D at Harvard — did not press Garber on Harvard’s ongoing conflict with the federal government or a potential settlement.
In his responses, Garber echoed the sentiment of a Faculty of Arts and Sciences report released last January, which affirmed professors’ right to “extramural speech” but warned that instructors must proactively encourage disagreement in the classroom to avoid alienating students.
One example of professors espousing political views, Garber said, was the rise of anti-Israel sentiment among a body of disproportionately left-wing faculty in the aftermath of Oct. 7.
“This gets back to what I was talking about with speech,” Garber said. “It did happen in classrooms that professors would push this.”
Garber said the rise in anti-Israel beliefs occurred in tandem with a rise in antisemitism on college campuses. Though Garber has dismissed attempts by the Trump administration to use antisemitism as a justification for its pressure campaign against the University, he has not denied its presence on Harvard’s campus.
But Garber argued that the most pervasive form of antisemitism is not overt speech or protest violations, but social exclusion — what he described as “social shunning” that is “nearly impossible” to police or punish.
As an example, Garber said he heard accounts from Israeli students who said conversations abruptly ended after they disclosed their nationality.
Instead of relying primarily on punishment, Garber touted changes to University orientations — including the addition of a module on discussing controversial topics — alongside the expansive reports produced by Harvard’s twin task forces on combating bias toward Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian affiliates.
“It’s about learning how to listen and how to speak in an empathetic way,” he said.
Garber also defended recent revisions to Harvard’s protest and speech policies, including the divisive adoption of more stringent campus use rules. He said it was “relatively straightforward” to make rules that both preserve free speech rights and protect the operation of daily life.
“It’s not that hard,” he said. “We had problems because there were claims that our policies were not clear. So we clarified them.”
“I bear some wounds for pushing on having clear policies,” Garber added. “And I think that’s really important.”
Garber’s emphasis on classroom neutrality comes as Harvard faces growing pressure over faculty activism. In April, the Trump administration demanded that Harvard commit to enacting governance reforms that would reduce the influence of faculty and administrators “more committed to activism than scholarship.”
Garber did not directly reference the demands, or the Trump administration, during the podcast, but he reiterated that his central focus is to remove the bias of personal opinion from the classroom.
“We’re not about the activism. We’re not about pushing particular points of view,” he said. “You should be logical, firmly grounded in the evidence and rigorous in how you approach these issues.”
—Staff writer Abigail S. Gerstein contributed reporting.
—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn or on Signal at hcc.35.
—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X at @EliseSpenner.