Harvard Pledges Additional Aid

Laying the framework for a uniform policy on donations to disaster aid funds, University President Lawrence H. Summers announced on Friday that Harvard will offer financial contributions to University groups organizing Kashmir earthquake relief efforts.

In a letter to the Harvard community released nearly one month after a 7.6-magnitude earthquake devastated parts of South Asia, Summers pledged University funding “on a case-by-case basis to groups of University members who, with compassion and imagination, have devised ways to contribute to the ongoing relief efforts in Pakistan.”

In the statement, Summers also outlined a broader policy on the role of the University in responding to disasters, but he steered clear of promising to directly match donations made by Harvard affiliates to relief causes.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and last year’s Indian Ocean tsunami, the University matched individual donations made by members of the Harvard community up to $100. But in the letter, Summers made no such pledge for future relief efforts. Instead, he wrote that the University’s “primary and most important response” would be to encourage students, faculty, and staff to draw upon their “unique capacities” to provide aid, and that Harvard would seek to better coordinate these efforts.

In addition to marshalling the skills of Harvard community members, Summers wrote that the University would “consider making various kinds of support available” to Harvard groups that organize fundraisers or other types of relief efforts.

Summers spokesman John Longbrake said that “support” would vary—but he noted that it would not include matching any funds raised by groups.

“I think a lot of it has to do with what the students and faculty come to the president with,” he said, calling Summers’ letter the “policy and the presumption of the University going forward.”

Rabia G. Mir ’07, who has met with Summers to discuss Harvard’s response to disasters, said that the University has already promised $5,000 to the group of student organizations that held an earthquake relief banquet at Kirkland House on Oct. 29.

“I appreciate how responsive the University has been, although I wished this happened a little sooner,” she said.

The organizations will also host an inter-faith remembrance service and vigil on Wednesday to solicit more donations, and Mir said that the group is anticipating an additional financial contribution from the University for that event.

Harvard Law School student Erum Navaee, a native of Pakistan, said that she believed a better policy would be to match funds donated by students because they would be more likely to donate money than time.

“[Matching donations] would be more encouraging because that way, everyone who is trying to help would put in as much as they can,” said Navaee, who helped coordinate relief efforts at the Law School.

After last year’s tsunami and Hurricane Katrina financial pledges, the University was criticized by some for using its funds to benefit nonprofit organizations rather than for academic pursuits.

“It’s a situation where the University is going to make somebody mad no matter what it does,” said Peter D. Hall, a lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government’s (KSG) Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations. “I think that it makes much more sense to encourage members of the University community to hold events and to mobilize their own resources.”

KSG Assistant Professor of Public Policy Asim I. Khwaja, who spoke with Summers’ office prior to the release of the letter, said he thought the timing of the policy announcement was inappropriate, since it came in the midst of the earthquake response.

“What I fear is that when Harvard suddenly goes against what it did before...everyone in South Asia is going to think ‘Why us, why are we singled out?’” said Khwaja, who helped create Risepak.com, a website to coordinate earthquake relief efforts.

Khwaja added that he believes Harvard should make better use of its faculty and students to assist in the region.

“My personal view is that at some level, one needs to seriously think about what role institutions like Harvard can play—and I don’t think the only role Harvard can play is money,” he said.

Last month, the University contributed more than $280,000 to Hurricane Katrina relief charities and in January, the University pledged $245,877 to tsunami relief organizations.

In an interview last month, Summers said that the decision to match donations in the aftermath of the tsunami and Hurricane Katrina was an “extraordinary step.”

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

—Staff writer Javier C. Hernandez can be reached at jhernand@fas.harvard.edu.