Harvard University president says he will step down in 2023

Lawrence Bacow speaks during his inauguration as the 29th President of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., October 5, 2018. REUTERS FILE PHOTO

Harvard President Lawrence Bacow said on Wednesday that he would leave his post in June 2023 after helping shepherd the nation’s oldest university through the COVID pandemic.

Bacow, 70, did not give a reason for his decision to step down but said he and his wife, Adele, would be spending more time with their grandchildren.

“There is never a good time to leave a job like this one, but now seems right to me,” Bacow, the university’s 29th president, said in a letter to students and staff.

Bacow attended Harvard as a graduate student in the 1970s and returned as president five years ago after first serving in the same job at Tufts University.

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