Dissent: Don’t Donate to Harvard, Reprise

Responding to the staggering $1 billion price tag for renaming Harvard Medical School, our Editorial Board colleagues penned a humorous enough piece calling attention to its absurdity.

The satire is well-taken, but the Editorial Board missed a chance to investigate mega-donations to Harvard. Our verdict is quite simple: They should never occur.

The naming rights price tag specifies an unrestricted donation. Therefore, supporting a billion-dollar gift on the grounds of potential medical innovation requires a long list of assumptions about where Harvard would end up using the money.

For all we know, the donation may get lost in administrative bloat or, more worryingly, the opaque hole of the Harvard endowment.

Beyond concerns about the unrestricted nature of the gift, we also vehemently believe no one should donate money to Harvard at all. As we’ve argued before, the marginal benefit of a dollar given to this institution is low, given Harvard’s $406 million operating budget surplus.

Moreover, Harvard educates a small, disproportionately wealthy slice of the higher education community. If donors are concerned about supporting social mobility or bolstering underfunded studies, they should not rank Harvard highly on their list of potential recipients, simply because the money could be better spent elsewhere.

Our university excels in teaching and research, but smaller organizations need this funding more. Why not cut out the middle person and give directly to medical research groups like Poverty Action Lab or Howard Hughes Medical Institute? Global health charities are also incredibly fruitful.

We remind the Board (and donors) that loosening the purse strings and sending a few hundred million bucks Harvard’s way need not be seen as deplorable. Giving to our school is much better than spending millions on yachts or private jets, as many billionaires do.

Nonetheless, it’s high time that a Board rightly concerned with making higher education more equitable recognizes that material sacrifice and redistribution are needed to reach such a goal. Otherwise, our wealthy schools will only get wealthier.

Saul I.M. Arnow ’26, an Associate Editorial Editor, lives in Adams House. Aden Barton ’24, an Associate Editorial Editor, is an Economics concentrator in Eliot House. Joseph W. Hernandez ’25, a Crimson Editorial Editor, is a Government concentrator in Adams House. Clyve Lawrence ’25, a Crimson Editorial Editor, is a Government concentrator in Adams House.

Dissenting Opinions: Occasionally, The Crimson Editorial Board is divided about the opinion we express in a staff editorial. In these cases, dissenting board members have the opportunity to express their opposition to staff opinion.