(Bloomberg) -- Harvard University President Lawrence Bacow, who led the school through the pandemic, examined its ties to slavery and expanded the campus, plans to step down next year.

Bacow, 70, will exit in June 2023, the school said Wednesday. He started the job in 2018. Neither he nor the school disclosed his future plans. 

“There is never a good time to leave a job like this one, but now seems right to me,” Bacow said in a letter to the Harvard community. “Through our collective efforts, we have found our way through the pandemic. We have worked together to sustain Harvard through change and through storm.”

Bacow joins several top university presidents who plan to depart. They include the leaders of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia and New York universities, and Dartmouth College.

Under Bacow, Harvard moved aggressively to protect students, faculty and staff during the pandemic. In March 2020, just as Covid-19 was emerging in the US, he led the closing of the campus and moved courses online -- becoming one of the first schools to do so. Harvard, the oldest and richest US college with a $53 billion endowment, wasn’t immune to the financial impact the pandemic. It posted a $10 million operating loss in fiscal 2020.

Over the last several years, Bacow embraced an examination of Harvard’s links to slavery. The result was a detailed report that included committing $100 million for an endowed “Legacy of Slavery Fund.” 

He also focused on expanding Harvard’s footprint into Allston, a neighborhood near the school’s main campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school added a new science and engineering complex there.

Bacow has been a vocal opponent of the federal tax on endowment gains, a levy passed during the Trump administration to help offset corporate tax cuts.

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