Relief Efforts Raise $630K

Harvard students, staff, and faculty have raised $630,618 to support relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, according to Senior Director of Community Relations Mary H. Power.

The University’s donation of over $280,000, which came out of University President Lawrence H. Summers’ discretionary fund, was donated under a University policy of matching individual donations up to $100 and donations from organized events up to $2,500, Power wrote in an e-mail Friday.

The majority of the money raised went to the American Red Cross, the NAACP Disaster Relief Fund, the Bush-Clinton Relief Fund, and the Salvation Army Disaster Relief Fund, Power wrote. Several smaller organizations also received aid.

In an interview yesterday, Power estimated that the average student donation came to around $95.

The University was only able to match $286,667.50 of the funds raised, Power said, because it received many donations of over $100.

Although Harvard matched donations for both last year’s tsunami relief effort and for Katrina relief this fall, Summers said in an interview with The Crimson last week that he did not expect the University to do the same for the recent earthquake in Kashmir that left 53,000 dead.

This decision has inspired students across the University to press the administration to provide financial support for the earthquake relief effort.

“We’re looking for some form of financial contribution and for the University to take a leadership role,” said Rabia G. Mir ’07, who is helping to orchestrate the effort. Mir is mobilizing support through an open e-mail list, earthquakerelief@hcs.harvard.edu.

Mir met with Summers last week and said that she thinks “there is space for dialogue,” but she remains dissatisfied.

“It’s important for Harvard to show that they’re doing something about it,” Mir said.

The earthquake relief effort has received support from a variety of student groups, ranging from Dharma and the South Asian Association to the Japan Society and the Harvard Premedical Society.

In an interview with The Crimson last week, Summers said that in the coming months, administrators will begin to discuss how Harvard should respond to future disasters.

“It’s a very difficult sort of balancing test to think about when the University, whose resources are fundamentally there for education and research purposes, should contribute in direct cash contributions,” Summers said.

Summers called the University’s matching of donations for tsunami and Katrina relief an “extraordinary step,” and indicated that there was no guarantee that future disasters would be met with the same response.

“The general presumption should continue to be that Harvard serves the world though its teaching and its research activities,” said Summers, “not by being involved in providing cash.”

Summers said he has asked David T. Ellwood ’75, dean of the Kennedy School of Government and the Black Professor of Political Economy, to “lead the discussion” about future University response to large-scale disasters.

“During the course of our regular meetings,” Ellwood wrote in an e-mail Thursday, “the deans will be discussing how the University can respond in an appropriate and strategic way to tragedies of the sort we have seen this year. There are important questions about how a University whose strengths and mission are based on teaching and research can be most helpful, and when or if direct cash payments are the most effective contribution.”

—May Habib and Zachary M. Seward contributed to the reporting of this article.