Questions about The $115 Million
Larry Ellison's rumored
$115 million gift to Harvard is getting
lots of attention.
(The Crimson did actually break this story; reporter May Habib seems to be one Crimson reporter who isn't afraid of making waves.)
But with all the excitement over what would possibly be the largest gift in Harvard's history, some significant questions remain unanswered and of deep concern to people at Harvard.
The $115 million is slated to go to the the Harvard Initiative for Global Health (love that acronym) to create a worldwide health monitoring organization.
The exact nature of this organization is vague, of course, as the gift hasn't even been confirmed.
But—question #1—what would it do that the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization do not? Should Harvard really be in the business of duplicating work that's already done by government-funded organizations with massive funding?
The apparent purpose of the gift seems a rather significant expansion of the university's mission. When referring to the infamous PEPFAR (President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief) grant, provost Steven Hyman suggested that the university was not equipped to be in the business of delivering AIDS drugs. Moreover, the idea was spread that HSPH couldn't handle a grant of that magnitude ($100 million).
Question #2: Is this new initiative so different? And if not, why aren't there similar objections to it emanating from Mass Hall? Or is it just different because it's Larry Summers landing the grant, rather than the Harvard School of Public Health?
Which brings us to question #3: What relationship will HIGH have to HSPH? Will there be "synergy"? Or is the "parallel" structure of HIGH merely a way to give Summers control over the program, and actually cut out the school of public health? Will the new entity report to HSPH dean Barry Bloom, or to Larry Summers?
Because the purpose of the grant is altruistic, it's easy to stop thinking critically about it. That would be a mistake. A gift of this much money from one individual (Larry Ellison) to, essentially, another individual (Larry Summers), isn't just about altruism. It's about power.
