Harvard President Alan M. Garber said the quiet part out loud in a recent interview detailed in a January 3, 2026 article in the Crimson entitled “Garber Faults Faculty Activism for Chilling Campus Debate and Free Speech.”
It begins:
“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.”
Harvard is hardly atypical. You can read the entire thing here.