Julie Salamon (New York Times best-selling author) sits down with retired Harvard President Lawrence Bacow.  Lawrence S. Bacow served as the 29th President of Harvard University from 2018 until 2023. Widely recognized as one of higher education’s most respected leaders, Bacow’s tenure at Harvard was marked by the creation of a range of academic initiatives, advocacy for public service and immigration, diversity and access to opportunity, and steady leadership of the university through the COVID-19 pandemic.  From 2011 to 2014, he served as President- in-Residence in the Higher Education Program at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. From 2014 to 2018, he served as the Hauser Leader-in-Residence at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Center for Public Leadership.  Prior to joining Harvard, Bacow was President of Tufts University from 2001 to 2011. During his tenure, he advanced the university’s commitment to excellence in teaching, research, and public service and fostered collaboration across the university’s eight schools.  Before his time at Tufts, Bacow spent 24 years on the faculty of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he held the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professorship of Environmental Studies.  Interested in math and science from an early age, Bacow attended college at MIT, where he received his S.B. in economics in three years and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He went on to earn three degrees from Harvard: a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an M.P.P. from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a Ph.D. in public policy from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.