Meet the Speaker: John Silvanus Wilson

John Silvanus Wilson serves as senior adviser and strategist to the president at Harvard University.

He earned masters’ degrees from Harvard Divinity School in 1981 and the Graduate School of Education (GSE) in 1982, and a doctorate from GSE in 1985. He is a member of the Board of Overseers, from which he will take a leave in order to serve in this new role. Wilson was president-in-residence at GSE, where he wrote a book on the future of higher education, with an emphasis on black colleges.

The former president of Morehouse College, former head of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and former senior administrator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Wilson is intimately familiar with the rhythms and values of higher education, and Faust said he is “distinctively able to ensure that Harvard’s efforts to create a truly inclusive environment for all of its members, guided by the task force report, bear full fruit.”