In the 2010 biopic The Hammer, he portrayed deaf NCAA championship wrestler and UFC mixed martial arts fighter Matt Hamill.

Harvard also won acclaim Off Broadway in 2012 as Billy, the deaf son in an intellectual, though dysfunctional, hearing British family, in Tribes by Nina Raine.

[8][9][10] The family initially placed Russell (due to his speech capability and residual hearing) in an oral college for children who learn to lip read exclusively.

Finding he was unhappy there, his parents switched him to a deaf school education at TSD, which included training in lip reading and speech therapy in English.

[5] While at Gallaudet, Harvard was prompted by one of his professors to submit a photo and resume to casting agents seeking a deaf actor for the film There Will Be Blood.

[15] He received an audition and won the part of H.W., for which he had to research and perform a vintage form of American Sign Language for the father-son confrontation scene with Day-Lewis.

[17] In August 2013, the FX/MGM production team of Fargo, the anthology TV miniseries adaptation of the 1996 Coen brothers' film, cast Harvard as Mr. Wrench, one of two hitmen who pursue Billy Bob Thornton's lead character Lorne Malvo throughout the first season of the series.

and Harvard feels unlike any criminal twosome of its type I've seen before, even in the midst of a show that is otherwise cleverly rearranging familiar pieces of the movie and other crime stories.

With this dual performance, wrote TimeOut critic James Sims, "Harvard joins the rank of deaf actors transcending any perceived limitations due to a lack of speaking lines, capturing the heart of the newly created characters with ease.

On August 10, 2015, Playbill.com announced the casting of Harvard for the Broadway company of Deaf West's revival production of the Duncan Sheik-Steven Sater musical Spring Awakening.

This transfer production, which opened at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on September 27, 2015, marked the Broadway debuts of both Harvard and co-star Marlee Matlin.

[37] On February 28, 2019, Harvard opened at the Cort Theatre on Broadway as the Duke of Cornwall in Shakespeare's King Lear, with Glenda Jackson in the title role.

He used his vocal skills to speak a few of his character's lines in moments of high emotion; in his death scene, the interpreter emerged as the servant who opposes and fatally wounds him, and their confrontation was done entirely in sign language.

From November 5, 2019, to March 11, 2020, Harvard assumed the roles of Link Deas and Boo Radley in Bartlett Sher's long-running production of Aaron Sorkin's To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway.

The company gave a special performance, offered free to 18,000 New York City public middle and high school students, at Madison Square Garden on February 26, 2020.

The city outbreak of COVID-19 in mid-March forced the production into hiatus until its reopening on October 5, 2021, when Harvard returned with original cast members Jeff Daniels and Celia Keenan-Bolger.

Harvard performed the principal role of the jailer "Rocco" in Beethoven's opera Fidelio in a unique coproduction between Deaf West Theatre and the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall from April 14–16, 2022.

That September, he starred in Jenny Koons's acclaimed production of Oedipus in a Deaf West Theatre collaboration with the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, CA.

Harvard is also, along with Jessica (JessKay) von Garrel, Sabrina Valencia and Jesse Jones III, a founding member of the hip hop Deaf dance troupe HipZu Funk, based in Austin, US.