Ivies Delay Presidential Searches Amid Charged Political Climate

Three Ivy League universities have presidential vacancies and appear to be in no hurry to find new leaders.

Cornell University, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania are being led by interim presidents who will remain in those roles for at least another year or more. Not one of these schools has even begun a search.

Normally, universities waste little time trying to find permanent replacements for outgoing presidents. So why are these schools dragging their feet?

At one point earlier this year, half of the Ivy League schools had presidential vacancies.

To be accurate, Yale University didn’t experience an interregnum of permanent leadership. Peter Salovey announced in August 2023 that the upcoming academic year would be his last. His successor, Maurie McInnis, was named in May 2024. Salovey essentially served as a lame-duck president for most of his final year in office while the search was conducted, which is perfectly normal.

What isn’t normal is what’s happening at the other three Ivies. Cornell, Harvard, and Penn have interim presidents following the resignations of their respective leaders, and none of these schools have begun searches for their replacements.

All three resigned amid political turmoil surrounding the Israel-Hamas war and the resulting claims of campus antisemitism. Two of these situations played out before a national audience.

In December 2023, Harvard’s Claudine Gay and Penn’s Liz Magill faced a congressional interrogation about free speech, antisemitism, and violence on their campuses. When New York Rep. Elise Stefanik asked if something as reprehensible as calling for the genocide of Jews violated university rules on harassment, both said it depended on the context.

Following the onslaught of public vitriol, Magill resigned her position four days later. Gay initially survived, backed by her board, but plagiarism accusations fed an already festering inferno, forcing Gay to vacate her post early in January 2024.

For the record, Sally Ann Kornbluth, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, offered that congressional committee the same answers but survived relatively unscathed.

Cornell’s Martha Pollock, while not subjected to congressional hearings, nonetheless fell victim to political unrest on her campus and announced her resignation in May 2024.

All three presidential vacancies, then, were clearly “created because of the political climate,” says Joe Sallustio, vice president of industry engagement at Ellucian, a tech solution company serving colleges and universities.

A 23-year veteran of higher education, Sallustio co-hosts the popular podcast “The EdUp Experience” and is co-author of “Commencement: The Beginning of a New Era in Higher Education.”

“The congressional hearings, the board pressure, the donors pulling out — those resignations happened because of the political environment,” Sallustio told BestColleges.

So now Harvard, Penn, and Cornell have interim presidents at the helm. And they’re not stepping aside anytime soon.

Harvard chose Alan Garber, the university’s chief academic officer, to serve as interim president. Almost seven months after Gay’s resignation, Harvard still hasn’t formed a search committee to find her successor.

On Aug. 2, Harvard announced that Garber would remain in office through the 2026-27 academic year. The university won’t begin a search until spring 2026 at the earliest.

At Penn, J. Larry Jameson, formerly dean of Penn’s medical school, will stay as interim president through 2026.

Cornell’s Michael Kotlikoff, the former provost, is serving a two-year term as interim president, and the university will begin searching for a permanent replacement 6-9 months before his term ends.

All three scenarios buck recent trends.

According to The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, the last two times the university’s president stepped down, search committees were formed within one month of the announcement.

Lawrence Bacow, Harvard’s president prior to Gay, announced his retirement in June 2022. Gay was named president in December of that same year.

After serving as Penn’s president for 18 years, Amy Gutmann was nominated in June 2021 to become the next U.S. ambassador to Germany. Following her Senate confirmation, Gutmann formally announced her departure in February 2022. A month before, Penn had already named Magill as the new president.

Cornell’s Pollack was named president in November 2016, just seven months after the death of Elizabeth Garrett, the previous president, in March. The university began its search in April.

This time around, these Ivies are content to ride out the sociopolitical maelstrom with an interim leader.

“I think that in this political climate, they’re waiting for everything to calm down,” Sallustio said. “An interim candidate is stabilizing, comfortable, and won’t disrupt students. They’re not going to be seen with the same fervor that an outside candidate would.”

These three universities also face the challenge of attracting qualified candidates willing to leap into a leadership crucible at such a volatile time.

“I absolutely think that’s at play,” Sallustio said. “I think those boards are probably going, ‘OK, who can we get right now to do this?'”

For now, Sallustio believes these institutions are content to “stay under the radar” and wait for election season to pass before deciding what kind of leadership they need. That’s the message universities should convey to key constituencies, including top donors.

“Tell them you’re going to go with an interim for a while to minimize disruption,” he said. “You’re going to wait through the election cycle, and then you’re going to normalize. There’s a lot of money at play here.”

Regardless of what happens in this fall’s elections, Sallustio believes high-profile universities might opt for more politically astute leaders given recent events.

“That would probably be a smart move,” he said.

“I don’t think those leaders were fully prepared to deal with that [congressional] environment. Maybe there’s nobody fully prepared to deal with an environment like that. But you would think that somebody who has formal training is going to be better at dealing with situations where you’re in the public eye than somebody who is an academic coming up through the ranks.”

Politicians or otherwise, whoever these universities choose as new leaders will be meticulously vetted, Sallustio said, because they need to get it right and establish stability.

“Not having a long-term, stable president at a Harvard or a Penn hurts the brand,” he said. “If you had a president who lasted six months and you put somebody else in who lasts six months, it starts to dilute the brand and show cracks in the foundation. So I think they’re going to choose really carefully.”