John Palfrey takes over the MacArthur Foundation as its sixth president — Harvard Gazette

In March, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced it had named John Palfrey ’94, J.D. ’01, its sixth president. In addition to earning degrees from Harvard College and Harvard Law School (HLS), (as well as a master’s of philosophy from the University of Cambridge,) Palfrey served as the Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and vice dean for Library and Information Resources at HLS, and as executive director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society from 2002 to 2008. He was head of school at Phillips Academy Andover from 2012 to 2019 and has served as board chairman at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation since 2014. The Gazette spoke with Palfrey on the Andover campus last spring about his Harvard time and about his new role (which began Sept. 1) leading an organization that is dedicated to helping solve some of the world’s most pressing challenges.   

 Q&A

 John Palfrey

 GAZETTE: What made you want to take this job?

 Palfrey:  I think the MacArthur Foundation plays an iconic role in the intellectual, social, and political life of the United States, and so the opportunity to help lead it in this next phase seemed like an amazing privilege. A large part of it, of course, is the ability to help do good in the world on a large scale. One of the things that the MacArthur Foundation does, among other large foundations, is to explore how to make an impact on a broader scale than ever before by learning from the way in which we support creative people and great institutions through philanthropy.

 GAZETTE: Do you have goals for the foundation?

 Palfrey: I’m excited to learn more about what the staff and trustees feel has been working well. One of the interesting things in philanthropy right now is the deep work around assessment and trying to make sure that things that we have invested in are actually working in the way that we intend. That’s similar to the world of education today and the focus on institutional research and assessment. I am eager to learn what MacArthur has learned about the impact of its philanthropy. The MacArthur Foundation is probably best known for its Fellows Program, which has had a huge impact on creative, artistic, and cultural life in America. In its overall grant making over the last few years, the MacArthur Foundation has decided to focus on a few big bets and large enduring commitments rather than many smaller bets in terms of the problems to tackle. I look forward to learning how they feel that transition has gone, concentrating on big bets rather than taking on a broader field of activity. MacArthur also has launched an initiative called 100&Change in which it held a competition for a single grant of $100 million dollars to solve a critical problem of our time, in this instance related to educating the children displaced by unrest in the Middle East. MacArthur has built on the learnings from that competition and created a fascinating nonprofit affiliate called Lever for Change, which

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