Did Harvard Just Sell Its Soul?
Posted on September 8th, 2014 in Uncategorized | 20 Comments »
The Times and the Globe report today that the Harvard School of Public Health is being given a massive new donation by “a group controlled by a wealthy Hong Kong family.” The family is basically two brothers, Ronnie and Gerald Chan—but although the gift is coming from the family foundation, Harvard is framing it as coming from Gerald.
Drew Faust makes an eloquent statement on the gift: “It’s always been, as the whole field always is, under-resourced,” Dr. Faust said.”
The Times does not report—the Globe, in a piece that is generally a rewrite of Harvard’s press release, does—that in return, “the school will be renamed the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in honor of Gerald Chan’s late father.”
Coming Soon: The Buddy Fletcher Harvard College; The Lloyd Blankfein Law School; and the Sumner Redstone School of Business.
No one will care, but to essentially sell one of Harvard’s schools to a donor—even if it is a very generous donor and an “under-resourced” school—is a watershed, and not a good one. Is one reason the Globe story doesn’t even mention Ronnie Chan, who co-heads the foundation which is giving the gift, because he was a director at Enron at the time of its collapse? He had the worst attendance record of any board member. Despite this, Chan is a longtime critic of U.S. financial policy; in the Financial Times in 2010, for example, he called for a “a rebalancing of moral authority”—meaning, giving more moral authority to China, whose highest officials Chan is notorious for cozying up to—and added that “the system that the west touted as superior has failed.”
Yes, that’s probably why the Globe piece didn’t mention him. The Harvard Pravda Gazette notes that the gift comes from the Chan family, but does not name Ronnie at all.
And this is in about ten minutes of digging. Imagine what you could find if you really tried. (Hello, people who get paid to do this stuff?)
Here’s a classic Midnight Oil tune to commemorate the announcement.
20 Responses
9/8/2024 12:04 pm
I am actually not sure what I think about this, but just to understand your perspective — was any soul-selling involved in renaming the School of Government?
9/8/2024 12:19 pm
Fair question. I don’t know-are the situations analogous? I can’t remember the exact circumstances of the renaming of the K-school well enough…was the quid pro quo so blatant? How much did genuine emotion/patriotism/mourning play into it?
9/8/2024 3:52 pm
I don’t know. I do recall that the Kennedys are a complicated family, though.
9/8/2024 4:20 pm
Well, sure. But the one the school’s named after was the US president, so that counts for something…
9/8/2024 4:43 pm
The Crimson reported last March that Gerald Chan has bought up several buildings around Harvard Square and quickly doubled the rents. This led to the demise of restaurants Upstairs at the Square and Tamarind Bay. The place of the latter will be taken by a restaurant owned by a son of Gerald Chan.
The Kennedy School received its name in 1966; there was no mention of any donation from the family. (Of course, there might have been, but there was no public hint of “give us enough money and we’ll rename a school”.) It happened less than three years after JFK’s assassination. RFK and EMK were sitting Senators. I do not see it as at all analogous.
9/8/2024 6:54 pm
Buddy Fletcher Harvard College has got a nice ring to it! Although if we follow the new convention, as with HSPH, it will be the Harvard B. Fletcher College.
Maybe just Fletcher College is simplest?
9/8/2024 9:33 pm
I agree with Warren in thinking the naming of the Kennedy School was more honorific than financial in its motivation.
The change from Kennedy School of Government (KSG) to Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) a few years ago is more interesting to me, particularly given today’s change from HSPH to HTHCSPH-you need to start with an “H” and go on from there.
I’m really pleased HSPH got the sort of injection it needs and deserves, but wonder where this renaming stuff all ends.
If $350M will put your moniker on HSPH, what would the Harvard Oprah Winfrey/JK Rowling Faculty of Arts and Sciences go for? Probably $5B minimum I would think, which would fix a lot of stuff. I imagine the Harvard Zuckerberg SEAS would go for around $2B. What about the Harvard Gates Family University? Surely at least $10B!
John Harvard must be having a good laugh, he just gave a few books!
9/9/2024 2:12 am
Off topic
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119321/harvard-ivy-league-should-judge-students-standardized-tests?utm_content=buffere1a33&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
9/9/2024 7:32 am
Reminds me of this Crimson piece:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1992/10/24/psst-wanna-buy-harvard-pbsbome-schools/?page=single
The $100m (1992) suggested in the article is more today, as a percentage of endowment, than the HSPH name went for. Based on pure inflation, it’s less.
9/9/2024 9:16 am
Naming schools in return for large donations is a common practice in higher ed. And has been for a long time. What is surprising about this? And using philanthropy to launder unsavory reputations is of even greater longevity (Nobel Prizes, Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation).
9/9/2024 11:26 am
The naming of the Kennedy School violated a long standing understanding at Harvard that no school should carry the name of a person or organization. Dean Allison had entered into an agreement with the family without telling the Corporation or President Bok. It was decided that the consequences of going back on the deal would be worse than going ahead. There was an implicit understanding that the family would give more money in the future, and when they didn’t give as much as expected, there was an effort to un-name the school The compromise was the HKS with a subtitle: The JFK School of Government. In the meantime the city council changed the name of the street to JFK. Some thought this was to send a signal to the School that the name should not be changed.
9/9/2024 12:14 pm
Let’s see, “Insider”:
1966: School is renamed Kennedy School of Government.
1977: Graham Allison becomes dean.
1981: Cambridge renames Boylston Street as JF Kennedy Street.
9/9/2024 1:36 pm
Hmm, this ship may have sailed, centuries ago. Harvard itself is named after a benefactor. This seems less egregious than renaming e.g. the Div School. SPH just isn’t one of the premier brand assets.
9/9/2024 3:29 pm
Aren’t you making an elephant sized assumption in the title of the post?
9/9/2024 8:33 pm
Also, “Insider”, according to Making Harvard Modern, President *Pusey* personally offered to the Kennedy family to rename the School, and agreed to RFK’s request to also rename it a School of “Government” rather than “Public Administration”. At the time, Pusey was trying to attract the Kennedy Library. According to both MHM and Harvard Observed, the Kennedy Library Foundation did make a $10 million gift to what became the Institute of Politics, which both books suggest but do not say may have been part of the deal for renaming the School.
9/9/2024 9:05 pm
Sorry. I’ve been inside too long. That muddles one’s mind. I ran together two different events. “Making Harvard Modern” is right about the main event.
9/13/2014 9:53 am
Off topic.
There are a few things in here with which even my lefty friends at Harvard can agree.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/paying-tuition-to-a-giant-hedge-fund/
9/17/2014 11:46 am
2 years old, Sam. And amazingly no one has been able to verify that price of admission rumor yet, the one which people continue to use as the hypothesis of sentences with elaborate conclusions.
9/17/2014 12:00 pm
Harvard has a soul?
9/19/2014 1:04 pm
Harry,
I had seen that the article was two years old. I’m dumb, but not that dumb my friend.
The fact that it was two years old, does not change certain things. The fact is, Harvard is all about money and an educational arms race. The other universities in the “same group” are all doing the same. I was not referring to “the price of admission.” I don’t know anything about that, so don’t bother to comment on whether it is factual or not.
What I do know a lot about is that Harvard is making some poor choices in how it runs its financial affairs. This is nothing new. I know one person who was in a high position in the financial area who tried to convince members of The Corporation to change certain policies, but to no avail. Those policies are still in force.
No one wanted to hear about those reckless policies when I mentioned it here in 2006 and 2007 and no one (including my friends on The Corporation) wants to hear it now. It will come back to haunt them and this university.
Best,
Sam