In an email to the Harvard community Friday afternoon, interim Harvard President Alan Garber announced the appointment of John Manning, dean of Harvard Law from 2017-2024, as provost of Harvard University. John C.P. Goldberg, a professor at Harvard Law, will become interim dean of Harvard Law School.
Goldberg served as deputy dean of Harvard Law from 2017 to 2022. He has been a professor at Harvard Law since 2008, most recently teaching Section 5 Torts in Fall 2023. The Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence, Goldberg contributed to the Restatement of Torts and the Restatement of Property and is widely regarded as a foremost modern scholar of torts.
Manning, A.B. ‘82, J.D. ‘85, has been a professor at Harvard Law since 2004 and its dean since 2017. A prominent textualist and administrative law scholar, he is one of the longest-serving law school deans in the United States and was reportedly a finalist to become president of Harvard last year before the appointment of Claudine Gay in 2023.
Garber was selected as interim president following Gay’s recent resignation. He did not officially leave his position as provost, but he said he would find a replacement shortly after. Manning now steps into that role on an interim basis. The provost is the chief academic officer of Harvard University and regarded as the second most powerful administrator. Along with the executive vice president, the provost reports directly to the president.
Manning sent an accompanying email titled “The Coming Months” to the Harvard Law community. After thanking the law school community and praising Goldberg, he ended by writing that he “look[s] forward to rejoining you when [his] work at the University is complete.” He also emphasized that he is only leaving “on an interim basis.” This echoes Garber’s careful wording that Manning is only taking “a leave from his deanship.”
However, the appointment of Manning, who in 2018 refused to revoke Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s lecturer position despite student protests, arrives amid fallout from Gay’s resignation and criticisms of the school’s stance toward the Israel-Palestine conflict. Manning wrote that Garber asked him to lead “initiatives on institutional neutrality and on open inquiry, respectful dialogue, and academic freedom.”
Harvard Law’s deputy deans Molly Brady, A.B. ‘08, and I. Glenn Cohen, J.D. ‘03, were participating in a panel about course registration when the news was made public. Goldberg, a former deputy dean, was perhaps a surprise choice to leapfrog over the current deputy deans to the interim deanship, but his appointment might also underscore that the appointment of both Manning and Goldberg are truly intended to be temporary.