Lawrence S. Bakou announced on Wednesday that he would resign as president of Harvard University in June 2023 after a five-year term in which he piloted the university through a coronavirus pandemic and attacks on admissions policies. This year we may face a Supreme Court test.
A lifelong scholar, Bako, 70, first arrived at Harvard as a graduate student in 1972, eventually earning three Harvard degrees. Prior to his current position, he was a professor and prime minister at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and then president of Tufts University.
Dr. Bakou said in a statement that his five-year term as president of Harvard University is short compared to his predecessor, Drew Gilpin Faust, who served for 12 years, but it is time to resign.
“There’s never been a good time to quit a job like this, but now it seems right to me,” he wrote in a message to the Harvard community. “We have worked together to maintain Harvard through change and storms, and collectively, we have made Harvard better and stronger in a myriad of ways.”
Harvard’s announcement that Dr. Bakou will resign follows similar recent announcements by the presidents of several prominent universities.
Recent issues with American university campuses
- Registration crisis: According to new data, the number of students enrolled in undergraduate courses in the spring of 2022 was 662,000 less than the previous year, a decrease of 4.7%.
- Harvard University President: Lawrence S. Bakou, who piloted the university through attacks on pandemics and admissions policies, announced that he would resign in 2023.
- Affirmative action: As the Supreme Court prepares to determine the legality of two race-aware abortion programs, lawyers who helped draft a Texas abortion ban offer critics of affirmative action a new path. Did.
- Freedom of speech: Legal scholars who wrote that President Biden would nominate a “black woman” to the Supreme Court were allowed to take on a new job in Georgetown after an investigation. He decided to resign anyway.
Lee Bollinger, 21-year president of Columbia University, said he would resign at the end of the 2022-2023 school year. Dr. Wayne AI Frederick, a surgeon who has been working at Howard University since 2013, said he would be discharged in 2024. Andrew Hamilton, President of New York University, said he would resign next year in the eighth year.
Dr. Bakou, who grew up in Pontiac, Mississippi, the son of an immigrant who fled the Nazi persecution, said he plans to spend more time with his children and grandchildren. A Harvard spokesman said Dr. Bakou did not allow the interview on Wednesday.
Dr. Bakou and his wife, city planning consultant Adele F. Bakou, announced in March 2020 that they had been infected with Covid-19. At the time, Dr. Bakou told Harvard Gazette that he was susceptible to infection due to a previously diagnosed autoimmune disease, but he did not identify it.
In an April article, Harvard Magazine reported that Dr. Bakou had experienced “a recent minor breakthrough after a trip to London.”
When his election was announced in 2018, it was like a presidential candidate, Dark Horse. Dr. Bakou was a member of Harvard Corporation, a leader of Hauser at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Public Leadership Center, and a member of the selection committee. The successor to Dr. Faust.
The Commission considered 700 candidates before deciding on Dr. Bakou himself, one of the members of the Commission.
Dr. Bakou has announced a more generous visa policy for international students during pandemics, announced a university-wide climate change initiative, and investigated the relationship with university slavery, and recently donated a slavery fund that allows scholars and students. It is alleged that the announcement was made to lobby the parliament. Continue to uncover Harvard’s connection to slavery.
The university has invested $ 100 million in this effort, part of which will track the descendants of Harvard’s enslaved people, between Harvard students and faculty members and historically black college students and faculty members. Assigned to create an exchange program.
Dr. Bakou’s tenure at Harvard is not without controversy.
Last year, Cornel West, considered one of the country’s most prominent black philosophers and progressive activists, announced that he had resigned from Harvard Theological School as a result of a conflict during his tenure. At that time, Dr. West attacked Harvard, calling it a “decline and decline” institution. Dr. Bakou, who refused to comment on the details of the case because of the confidentiality of the process, nevertheless defended the university’s treatment of it.
In another highly publicized dispute, three female graduate students filed a lawsuit against Harvard this year, with African and African-American professor of research and anthropology John Comaroff sexually harassing students. He accused the university of ignoring the claim.
By the time the proceedings were filed, Dr. Komarov, who denied the allegations, was on vacation after the university discovered that he was engaged in improper verbal conduct. It turns out that he is not responsible for unwanted sexual contact.
But perhaps Harvard’s biggest challenge concerns the lawsuit filed by students for fair admissions, accusing the university’s racially-aware admission system of discriminating against Asian-American applicants. ing.
The Supreme Court will hear the case this fall. Dr. Bakou said the challenge to Harvard’s admissions process “endangers the 40-year precedent that gives the university the freedom and flexibility to create a diverse campus community.”