Lawrence Bacow – A Son of Immigrants Champions Respect and Inclusion

In July 2020, Harvard University president Lawrence Bacow joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to file suit in federal court against the Trump administration. At issue was the administration’s decision to force international students at American universities to leave the country if they could not attend in-person classes in the fall. 

The suit came after the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) notified schools that their international students would be required to return to their home countries if they took courses entirely online. Students whose schools offered only online instruction this fall would have to re-register at another school holding in-person classes in order to stay in the US. Students would not even be exempt if all instruction at their institutions was forced entirely online due to coronavirus outbreaks.

The universities argued that the decision violated federal law because authorities did not provide a coherent rationale for it and there was no notification inviting public comment. Dozens of other universities, local governments, and student groups lined up in support of the schools’ position.

In a hearing just days after the lawsuit was filed, DHS and ICE quietly withdrew their new guidelines. 

Bacow had earlier noted that the “cruelty” of the decision was exceeded only by its “recklessness.” He said that it seemed to have been specifically crafted to pressure schools to re-open campuses, regardless of the safety of students and faculty. 

Harvard’s 29th president knew what he was talking about.

The task of repairing the world

Bacow’s identity as the proud son of Jewish immigrants and survivors of persecution is one of the central facts of his life. His understanding of the immigrant experience, and of the dangers of hatred and persecution, is personal.

His late father escaped the violent pogroms against Jewish communities in Eastern Europe to come to the United States as a child refugee. Bacow’s late mother survived Auschwitz and arrived in the US as a teen. The couple made their home near Detroit, Michigan, where Lawrence Bacow was born in 1951.

After the announcement in 2018 that he would become Harvard’s next president, Bacow told the press he would never have been able to stand before them had the US turned away his parents, who arrived with “literally nothing.”

Bacow has said that the fact that his father could earn a college education was the base on which he was able to build his own success. Today, he often discusses the Jewish concept of tikkun olam—literally, “repair of the world” in Hebrew—to define his philosophy. He urges all people to accept their part of the responsibility to do exactly that. 

Learning from everyone

Family and friends who know him best describe Bacow as an approachable, kind person with a sense of humility: someone who never forgets his roots among people who found themselves unwelcome in so many times and places.

He draws his inspiration from the ethical teachings of Judaism, as well as from the many people and traditions he’s engaged with over a lifetime. It’s vital to remember that “we can learn from anyone,” he once told an interviewer. 

Bacow will never forget an encounter that continues to impress upon him how important it is to address the structural inequalities built into society. When he worked at Tufts University, he served as academic adviser to a student who could not afford health insurance. She showed up in his office in tears after receiving a boiler-plate email from the registrar warning her that her registration would be voided if she could not supply proof of insurance. If she lost her registration, she would become homeless. Bacow helped the student navigate the bureaucracy, and she went on to pursue a PhD in sociology.

Working to level the playing field

Bacow was always interested in science and mathematics. He earned an undergraduate degree in economics from MIT, followed by three Harvard degrees: a JD and a master’s and PhD in public policy. 

He spent a quarter-century as a professor of environmental studies at MIT and served as the university’s chancellor from 1998 to 2001. At MIT, he became internationally recognized for his expertise in the non-adjudicatory resolution of environmental disputes. 

As president of Tufts University in Boston from 2001 to 2011, Bacow focused on promoting high standards of scholarship and collaboration. He worked to improve the undergraduate experience, increase the school’s engagement with the international community, and foster a sense of public service and active citizenship among students and faculty. He also held faculty positions in the fields of public health, economics, civil and environmental engineering, and law and diplomacy.

It was Bacow who initiated development of a new diversity office at Tufts that placed inclusion at the center of a plan for excellence. And it was he who strengthened the school’s finances in the wake of the global economic meltdown of 2008, developing the most significant fundraising campaign the school had ever undertaken. 

In 2010, he was appointed by President Barack Obama to the board of advisors for the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Bacow is widely respected among peers as a leader who drives scholarly and administrative innovation, helps develop a spirit of engagement in civil society, and works to develop new ways to help students achieve their dreams of a meaningful, affordable education, with a notable focus on expanding student aid support.

Within the search committee tasked with replacing outgoing Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust, Bacow’s name rose to the top. Already a Harvard instructor and dedicated fundraiser for the school, he had proven his ability to get things done.

Sealing the deal for Harvard was the fact that Bacow had earned a reputation as a bridge-builder with a strong, genuine commitment to fostering diversity in higher education. He has stated that his view of service as a university education advocate includes being able to have meaningful discussions with people, regardless of their point of view or political party. 

Education in service to democracy

In 2019, Bacow told an audience at a “Voices in Leadership” program at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health that he wants to find innovative ways to “bend the cost curve” in higher education, so that students still receive the services they need while overhead costs are kept in check. This is a challenging issue in an era when competition among schools continues to drive costs up, rather than down. Solutions he foresees include technology-assisted blended learning, which would offer more possibilities for students to participate in their educations remotely.

University presidents today confront an increasingly polarized campus world, rife with reports of political bias and perceived favoring of privileged elites. As a dedicated advocate for public university education, Bacow remains an unabashed cheerleader for higher education’s value as a means of furthering the American dream and building an inclusive, engaged society. He views his position at Harvard not only as leadership of a single university, but as a “call to public service”—a way to help renew public faith in an irreplaceable public good.