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Leadership Lessons from Professor Avi Loeb

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Group photo of the ITC postdocs and student at the beginning of the 2025/6 academic year. (Image credit: T.J. Martin)

Today, I completed my term of over two decades as director of Harvard’s Institute for Theory and Computation. Below is the transcript from a speech that I gave in a gathering of about a hundred people who assembled in celebration of the event. The video of the speech will be posted tomorrow on my YouTube channel here.

***

I would like to start by saying that the rumors about my death are overly exaggerated. The best is yet to come. I always say that because I’m all about the future.

A few months ago, there was an artist from New York City, Greg Wyatt, the most accomplished sculptor in the United States, who put many bronze sculptures in many places. And he decided to donate two bronze sculptures of Galileo Galilei, with a third one being made now, as well as fifty-one watercolors in my office. And I told our administrator, T.J. Martin, “Get rid of all the file cabinets that I have, because they represent the past. I don’t care about the past. I don’t need all these files from the time I was department chair.” And so, we did. If you visit my office, it’s a mini museum right now. And there is actually a fourth sculpture being cast in bronze, the first one that I’m responsible for, which will hopefully within a few months arrive.

But I wanted also to explain a few things about the principles, the way I manage my life. Everyone who knows me, including my wife — who is somewhere here, will tell you that I haven’t changed since I was a kid. I’m still the same Avi. I used to drive a tractor to the hills of the village where my parents had a farm, and I used to read philosophy books. That’s what excited me, the big picture. I didn’t care about the details. I didn’t care about people. I don’t need likes on social media. It’s really irrelevant because what matters the most is when you look at our cosmic environment is to figure out what it’s all about.

Back then, when I was a kid, my horizon extended to about 1.3 light seconds, which is the distance to the Moon, and that was during the Apollo program. That was pretty much what everyone was talking about in terms of space, 1.3 light seconds. And all that changed since then for me personally, is that now I am concerned with 46.5 billion light years that we can observe in the cosmos. My intellectual growth was the transition from 1.3 light seconds to 46.5 billion light years. And that’s the main change. I’m still the same guy.

I didn’t have any footprint on social media until very recently. The only reason I now have a YouTube channel, presence on X and on Spotify, is because a number of people recently started to create videos that look like me, speaking my voice, using AI. And these fake videos that are misrepresenting me created this urgency for me to produce my authentic content. So that’s why I have it. But I don’t care how many likes I have on social media because I never cared about what people think.

So now I get to the point. I was born on a farm and I was interested in philosophy. But I grew up in Israel where service in the military is obligatory, and the best I could do that is closest to philosophy was to do physics, because that could be important for national security. The military recruited me to a special program called Talpiot. I was good in physics, so they put me in a program that allowed me to finish my PhD at age 24 and pursue a project that I proposed back then to President Reagan’s “Star Wars” initiative in the 1984. It’s interesting to recognize that Star Wars is sort of connected to what I’m talking about these days, but this represented the beginning of my career.

This project brought me to Washington, D.C. quite often because we received a few million dollars a year. I was leading the theoretical work in this project. And in one of the visits, I met Marshall Rosenbluth. He was the Pope of plasma physics, and he told me, “If you want to do a postdoc, you should think about the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton,” where he used to be faculty. I said: “I don’t know anyone there,” and so I wrote to the administrator there, Michelle Sage. I sent her an email saying, “I would like to visit,” and she replied: “Send me your CV. We don’t just accept anyone here.” I said, “OK,” I sent her a list of 11 publications just around the time that I finished my PhD, and she said, “You may come.” I arrived at her office the last day of my trip to Washington and she said, “You know, there is only one person here that has free time. Everyone is busy. The only person who has free time is Freeman Dyson.” In reply, I said: “Freeman Dyson, I know him from textbooks.” I saw his name in the Landau and Lifshitz book on Quantum Electrodynamics. That’s amazing.” I came to Freeman’s office and he said, “Oh, you are an Israeli. Do you know about John Bahcall?” And I said, “I never heard of him.” And he said, “Well, he’s married to an Israeli. Let me check if he’s around. He likes to speak Hebrew.” Freeman called John, and John was there and invited me to lunch, and then offered me to visit for a month, and then offered me a five-year fellowship. And I will never forget that because I was a nobody. I had no credentials in the mainstream of astrophysics. He said, “We are offering you a five-year fellowship under the condition that you will switch to astrophysics.” And I didn’t know how the Sun shines.

So why am I telling this to you? Because I appreciate people who come from unfortunate or unprivileged circumstances. That’s who I was. I didn’t know anything, and not knowing how the sun burns its fuel is very humbling given that John Bahcall dedicated all of his career to how the sun burns and produces neutrinos. So, I accepted the offer to study astrophysics. And after four years, the Harvard Astronomy department offered me a faculty position when a postdoc here named Marijn Franx who was offered first, declined the offer because he said: “There is no chance of getting tenure at Harvard. I better go to the Netherlands.” And so, the department decided: “OK, we’ll go to the second person in line,” and offered the same position to Avi. And so once again, I felt really fortunate. This was an arranged marriage by circumstances. Given the opportunity, I said to myself: “What the hell? I’ll go to Harvard. If I don’t get tenure, I have plan B, which is to go back to the farm where my father worked.” And I’m happy being immersed in nature. Today, I jog every morning at sunrise for three miles, and I love to do that in the company of ducks, bunnies, birds and wild turkeys. In fact, I even think about it now because sometimes I’m frustrated with academia and I wonder: “Maybe it would have been a better career choice to worry about nature all day long rather than people.” And that was starting point.

After arriving to Harvard, I got tenure within three years because Cornell lost Stu Shapiro and wanted to hire a tenured professor. They ended up offering it to me, and again, I thought: “That’s amazing.” Then Harvard came forward and tenured me.

All of these experiences taught me something extremely important, which is to look at the raw talent of a person and decide whether this person has a future rather than look at how well they perform in exams or in letters of evaluations. John Bahcall took this risk on me, and it was a big gamble. I could not take the same risk as the director at Harvard because there is always a committee that makes the decision. In fact, even within the astronomy department for which I served as chair, there was one meeting of the admissions committee of students where an unprivileged student from India showed extreme talent and promise. I voted definitely admit this guy. And the chair of the committee said: “No, that’s too much of a risk.” And I gave up, and I’m still working with this student who is producing amazing work, and had been promised a faculty position recently. And I still feel bad that we did not admit this student, because for me, what matters is not where the person comes from. I would never get the opportunities I got if that the routine procedure would have applied to my case. That was the principle that I tried to advocate within the Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) in bringing new talent.

When I became the chair of the Astronomy Department, the previous chair, Jim Moran, came to me and said, “Avi, you have to give up on your ITC directorship because the department chairmanship takes 85% of my time.” Jim Moran is a very trustworthy person nd said: “ You would not be able to do both jobs. Please step down from the ITC directorship.” I said, “Well, let’s see how it goes.” Then, it turned out that I could do both with only 25% of my time, and you might ask how? What was the second principle that I adopted that allowed me to do both jobs for 25% of my time? And then I accepted serving as the founding director of Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative (BHI), which added another 10%. How is it possible?

The reason is really simple. I am straightforward, transparent. My wife says she will know immediately if I have an affair with someone. It’s impossible for me to cheat, because I cannot contemplate in my mind telling someone one thing with the reality being different. I just cannot do that. Yesterday I came back from New York City because for the first time, they asked me to appear on a movie set of a new film. I have no ability to play anyone other than myself. But very gladly, they asked me to play myself in that movie. And the main actor played Superman in 2006, Brandon Routh. I said: “Well, you play a nerd in this new movie, and that’s the opposite, the anti-thesis of Superman. How can you play such opposite roles?” And he said, “I have both of them in me.” So, I told him, “Look, I’m also a nerd in my day job, but I jog every morning.” But he takes advantage of these dual qualities to play many roles that are different. At any event, playing myself is the only thing I can do and this turns out to be a great treasure as a leader, for example — of the Harvard Astronomy Department. Because what happened and the reason that I ended up serving three terms, is that I was frank, sincere, straightforward, transparent with the faculty about what is going on. If we had a dispute with the Dean, I would take my dispute with him representing the faculty. I don’t care what people above me say, because I’m representing the faculty. I want to help them fulfill their goals. I was fighting with the higher administration. They hated me doing that, but they kept me for three terms. And the only reason I needed to allocate only 25% of my time to this is because everyone would be on board within the department. People did not suspect that I’m manipulating them or fooling them. Everyone knew what’s going on. I would send summaries of every faculty meeting to everyone, so everyone would be on the same page, and I would never manipulate anyone. That helped a lot because I didn’t have any friction within the department. Usually, in politics, the worst thing you can do is generate friction. Politics is the art of achieving goals by suppressing friction within your support group, because otherwise you waste a lot of energy on the friction. My approach to preventing friction would be to represent my colleagues and work with them and so that’s why I didn’t need to allocate more than 25% of my time to this job.

So, that’s my second leadership principle. The first guiding principle is to select people based on their talent. Don’t pay attention to what people say but only to substance. The second guiding principle is to be transparent and pursue the goals of those that you represent. And that was the reason that the ITC was so successful.

You can think about the ITC as a car. A car needs to have an engine in order to drive well, and the engine of the ITC were the postdocs. The reason that the Harvard Astronomy department hired me is because they tried to hire the most prominent senior theorists at the time, like Bohdan Paczyński or Peter Goldreich or Roger Blandford, and that recruitment effort was not successful. These luminaries said: “Harvard has no strong profile in theoretical astrophysics. We will not move from Caltech or Princeton.” So I wanted to bring theoretical astrophysics at Harvard on the map, and I had experience from the Institute for Advanced Study. I knew exactly what needs to be done. I saw how John Bahcall does it.

The only difference is that I couldn’t appoint someone for a fellowship just by my decision. In fact, after John offered me the postdoc position, I went down the stairs of the so-called E-building at the Institute for Advanced Study, and I met David Spergel going up the stairs. David Spergel was a former student of the Harvard Astronomy department who went to the Institute a couple of years before me where he was offered by John a long-term (five-year) fellowship. So, I told David: “John just offered me a five-year fellowship. Can you believe it?” and he said, “That is impossible because the five-year fellows are supposed to meet this afternoon with John and discuss whether to offer you a position.” I said, “OK.” Then they met in the afternoon, and John said: “What do you think about Avi? Do you think he’s qualified? Should we offer him a five-year fellowship?” And Spergel said: “But you already offered him the position. Why are you asking us?” And John said: “Well, I just want to make sure that you agree with me.” That was the way he operated. I couldn’t do that as director of the ITC, and I appreciate that John gambled on me.

In retrospect, my ITC directorship was really an amazing time, and I did it as a service to the Harvard astrophysics community, in order to promote quality here. In fact, I remember that in 2005 I spoke with Ramesh Narayan and he said: “There is no way that we can compete with theoretical astrophysics at Caltech or Princeton.” He said that to me, and I replied: “Wait and see.” Within a decade later, Ramesh agreed with me that we are in par with Caltech and Princton because we attracted the best students and postdocs in competition with them.

This represents a very important lesson for life. Very often you’re being told there are some limits, you can’t really cross them. But the only reason that these limits would prevail is if you believe in them. If you don’t believe in limits, you can do anything. In fact, I wrote a related essay just yesterday here. I was asked to write for kids of families overseas that serve in the military. I said, maintain you childhood curiosity and do not pay attention to the adults in the room who pretend to know everything, and don’t pose any limits on yourself, just follow your passion. Too often we have self-fulfilling prophecies in life. People tell you something, and then you accept it, and then you fulfill their expectation. But if you believe in yourself, if you believe that Harvard can be better than Caltech or Princeton, you can make it better. And that was the reason I allocated a portion of my research time to leadership roles.

I’m grateful to Lisa Kewley who allows me now to pass on the baton of the ITC directorship to Charlie Conroy so that I can focus on my creative work, which is really a blessing. I don’t need anyone to tell me what to do. I don’t need anyone to inspire me. I have a lot in me that needs to come out in creative work and so the best is yet to come. This is really, for me, a return to what I always wanted to do, and I took a detour of twenty years of leadership positions in order to improve my environment. That was the only reason.

Now, a car doesn’t just have an engine, which are the ITC postdocs. It needs some drivers, so that these are the senior faculty that I’m grateful, like Lars Hernquist or Ramesh Narayan and now we have many more. But it also needs transmission, because a good engine by itself doesn’t mean that the car will go fast. You need transmission. We had amazing administrators who served that role. We had Nina Zonnevele, Mark Palmer who transitions to the Astronomy department, and now we have T.J. Martin, who is doing a, an amazing job, Abby Hayhurst, Uma Mirani and before that we had Jacquline Donahue who did an amazing job and now works at the Harvard College Observatory Office.

The other thing to keep in mind is that bringing good people to work with you is not a Catholic marriage. You have to be proud of people when they leave your organization, you should think of them always as your extended family. All these postdocs that passed through the ITC, all the students that passed through the ITC, all the administrators that passed through the ITC, are still members of our ITC family. And it’s very rewarding to see them doing well.

I’ll close by saying that right now we send to Mars robots that are helicopter-parented by engineers In the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. We’ve never sent a system to space that uses artificial intelligence and is fully autonomous in making decisions. These were systems that were monitored by engineers to make sure that they do what we want them to do on the surface of Mars or on the surface of the Moon. These were all of our space missions. And I just advocated in a podcast yesterday and today that we should aim to employ artificial intelligence in space, especially for if humanity would aim to become interstellar, i.e. go beyond the Solar System. These journeys are very long. It’s just like sending your kids out of home. You don’t expect them to report back every day. You just want them to follow your guiding principles. And every now and then send a message telling how well they’re doing. The same applies to interstellar journeys. We can send robots with artificial intelligence that will not wait for guidelines, because even the nearest star is 4.25 light-years away, Proxima Centauri. So there is no time for them to follow instructions in real time. The future of space exploration is with artificial intelligence.

And this is also my philosophy about all the postdocs that were members of the ITC. I just wanted to send them with the kind of inspiration, the guidelines that the ITC gave them, and let them bring good to the world without no strings attached. I don’t need thank you notes. I just want them to improve the world.

***

At the end of my speech, I received the following note from my former ITC postdoc, Dr. Morgan MacLeod, who wrote:

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as well as the following email from my current ITC postdoc, Dr. Devesh Nandal:

“Dear Prof. Loeb,

I am writing this message to you because I was too shy to say this to your face. Being there at your ITC celebration today brought me immense joy and I left the room feeling inspired. I had always known about all the amazing research you have done over many decades, but after hearing the sheer number of lives you touched and enriched, it made me feel very special to be working with you.

Your passion and dedication also remind me of my father, who like you, has mentored so many students and athletes. And since I cannot be at my home in India to see my father in person, knowing I am working with you who has the will and dedication to work and inspire others is enough for me.

I hope to retain the same wonder and enthusiasm you have given me as I progress in my career. I am truly lucky to be here, not because I am Harvard, but because I get to work with you.

Kind regards,

Devesh”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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(Image Credit: Chris Michel, National Academy of Sciences, 2023)

Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.

Professional website:

https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/

Social media:

https://avi-loeb.medium.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorAviLoeb

https://open.spotify.com/show/1zhndXkvSY2b8FdjspFpCd
https://x.com/ProfAviLoeb

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      AL: Regarding the origin of our species, of course there could be paths that led to humans that are not fully recognized. That definitely is possible. And you could have also markers within the DNA that indicate some effect of transfer of life from, let’s say, Mars to Earth,
      in a process called panspermia (as discussed here). You can imagine situations like that.
      But the DNA is not necessarily universal throughout the cosmos. The kind of genetic code we find nowadays in humans was very different in the past history of Earth. If you go back a few billion years on Earth, there weren’t even complex cells with nuclei; eukaryotic genesis introduced nuclei in cells where the DNA is packaged. It only came about 2–3 billion years ago on Earth. That happened at roughly half the age of the Earth. Having someone visit us with similar DNA characteristics is extremely unlikely. There is also the possibility of the chirality — the way the double-helix of the DNA is organized, being a mirror image of what we have. In that case, it would be catastrophic for us to even touch such beings, because we are not protected from their diseases (as discussed here). I recommend not shaking the hand of an alien if you find one.
      JW: I’ll keep that in mind. Well, so the Nordic supposedly looking like us, what do you make of that?
      AL: There are Nordic people on Earth, right? Obviously, you can find them in crash sites of fighter jets or in battlefields. There could be a government program for retrieval and reverse engineering of materials from aircrafts that were manufactured by adversarial nations and some of them may be Nordics, while others may be of another ethnic origin.
      The whole idea that there are four species of aliens visiting us is a rumor that possibly came out of retrieving pilots from crash sites that belong to different nations on Earth. But I think it’s extremely unlikely that indeed we’re dealing with beings that somehow mingled with humans and made babies out of that. That is ridiculous.
      JW: You know what it is, Avi? Nobody trusts the government. So, this idea that they’re secretly looking through ancestry sites to try to map out if they’re extraterrestrials, I think that’s a part of this as well, right? Is the government being transparent?
      AL: It may well be that someone in government had the idea of checking. That’s quite possible. But that idea itself is highly questionable, scientifically speaking. So, I would say this person, who thought about the idea of checking the DNA, is not very credible, scientifically speaking.
      But more generally, there may well be evidence for extrasolar materials, and other information that the government holds under wraps. And these clues may be in corporations like Lockheed Martin, like MITRE. Yesterday, Representative Burlinson asked MITRE publicly here to respond to a related disclosure request.
      So, yes, we should check what the government knows and help them figure things out as much as possible, because — apparently — they’re at a loss if they’re asking for DNA information of this nature.
      JW: Something to think about. Avi Loeb, thank you so much for separating fact from fiction for us. I always appreciate it. Good seeing you.
      ABOUT THE AUTHOR
      (Image credit: Lotem Loeb; May 22, 2026)Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, former director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
      Professional website:
      https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/
      Social media:
      https://avi-loeb.medium.com/
      https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorAviLoeb
      https://open.spotify.com/show/1zhndXkvSY2b8FdjspFpCd
      https://x.com/ProfAviLoeb
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