Marc Goodheart ’81, J.D. ’85, Secretary of the University since 1998—and thus the chief administrative officer of the two governing boards, the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers—will relinquish that post following the Commencement ceremonies this May, the University announced today. A University attorney and assistant to the president since 1991, then Secretary, and Secretary and vice president since 2011, he has played a central role in Harvard governance, in which capacity he has staffed presidential searches and, at presidents’ behest, many searches for decanal and other senior University appointees. He has also been deeply involved in planning Commencements, presidential installations, and other major Harvard events. Although stepping down as vice president and Secretary, Goodheart will remain a senior adviser to President Alan M. Garber and other University leaders, according to the news announcement.
In a message to colleagues quoted in the announcement, Goodheart wrote, “I came to Harvard as a student in 1977, and I’ve considered myself a Harvard student ever since—perpetually learning about an institution whose ecosystem is as dynamic, whose people are as talented, and whose mission is as essential as any I know. What has kept me here longer than I’d ever imagined is not simply the allure of the University’s mission, not simply the devotion and resilience of the people devoted to advancing it, not simply the University’s inexhaustible capacity to serve up novel and intriguing issues, but the recognition that there is always, inevitably, a gap between Harvard’s ambitious ideals and their fulfillment. It has been and remains a privilege to work with dedicated colleagues on ever-evolving efforts to understand and narrow that gap.”
A person of singular discretion in a position that demands that quality, Goodheart is perhaps best known to the wider community for his role at Commencement, when he hands honorands their diplomas as their degrees are conferred by Harvard’s president. Less well known is his authorship of the concise citations, often witty and replete with alliteration and internal rhymes, that the president speaks as the degrees are awarded. (In 2024, for example, guest speaker Maria A. Ressa, the Philippine journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, was toasted thus: Amid times of unrest, facing threats and arrest, she rivets her focus on facts, truth, and trust; an intrepid, innovative investigative journalist, irrepressible in pressing for freedom of the press.)
The Crimson has had a running theme of covering Goodheart as the “‘Keeper of the Keys’: Meet the Secretary of Harvard’s Secretive Governing Boards,” as a headline last February put it (subhead: “Marc L. Goodheart ’81 is the most powerful person at Harvard no one has ever heard of”). In fact, professionally and personally, he is an institutionalist. In an important sense, he and A. Clayton Spencer (who joined the University in 1997 and served as vice president for policy from 2005 to 2012, before becoming president of Bates College, now emerita) provided continuity in Massachusetts Hall and Loeb House during the end of the tumultuous presidency of Lawrence A. Summers, the successor interim presidency of Derek C. Bok, and the transition to Drew Gilpin Faust. And he was Secretary when Faust and the governing boards undertook the unprecedented reforms adopted in 2010 that enlarged the Corporation, established expert standing committees, and set up clear succession procedures for the Corporation’s Fellows: changes 360 years in the making, as this magazine characterized them, prompted by evolving institutional norms and the aftermath of Summers’s truncated term in office and the University’s subsequent financial crises.
Such dramatic moments in Harvard history aside, Goodheart has a characteristically quieter description of his own extended commitment to the University: In his succinct entry to his 1981 thirty-fifth year class report (2016), he noted, “Unable to fathom that it’s been 38 years since I hauled my stuff up to the fifth floor of Weld South. Amused that, in all that time, I’ve managed to progress only to the other side of Harvard Yard. There must be something about this place.”
In a message to the community, Garber said Goodheart has “an uncanny ability to anticipate the many possible consequences of any decision” and hailed him as “a person of great depth and breadth.” In the news announcement, the president said:
Everyone who knows Marc recognizes that he always puts the interests of the institution first, seeking to preserve those aspects of Harvard that are its heart and its soul while exploring new avenues for excellence and growth. Where there have been gaps between where we are and where we want to be, he has endeavored to narrow them in his customarily unassuming fashion, enriching deliberations with his matchless understanding of history and precedent. From helping to reform our governance structures to guiding efforts to make our community more inclusive—and countless contributions in between—Marc has made the University better.
Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker said:
Marc Goodheart’s integrity, selflessness, and deep devotion to Harvard and its enduring values are at the heart of all that he does on behalf of the institution and have made him an essential adviser to me, four other senior fellows, and scores of members of the governing boards over the years. Throughout his 26 years of service as secretary—in times of challenge and of opportunity—he has supported the governing boards as a wise and trusted steward of the University’s mission, and I am delighted he will continue to support Harvard as a member of the Mass Hall team in the coming years.
A search for a successor Secretary will begin soon. When the Corporation appointed Garber president on August 2, it announced that a search for his successor would be organized in 2026. In the wake of the relatively brisk search that resulted in Claudine Gay’s election as president in December 2022, and her resignation just six months after taking office, critics have suggested that the governing boards’ processes and procedures for this most consequential responsibility need to be reexamined, at a minimum. Given the heightened difficulty of being a university president today, and the many searches pending at peer institutions (Columbia, Cornell, and Penn among them) in coming years, the transition to a new Secretary soon, and any refinements the governing boards wish to make in organizing and conducting their search, would seem to accord with Harvard’s announced schedule to identify the next president to begin serving in the summer of 2027.
