[1][2][3] Harris received his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from Columbia University.
He also obtained a master's degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
[4] Harris taught at Columbia, the Jewish Theological Seminary, Princeton University, and the University of Pennsylvania, before joining the Harvard faculty in 1989.
He was named Harris K. Weston Associate Professor of the Humanities in 1991 and the Harry Austryn Wolfson Professor of Jewish Studies in 1994.
[4] In 2008, Harris was named dean of undergraduate education at Harvard College before stepping down in 2017.