Saudi Aramco Sponsorship of HackHarvard Sparks Criticism

More than 500 students gathered at Harvard for the ninth annual HackHarvard, a 36-hour student-run hackathon which was marked by controversy over the involvement of Saudi Aramco, the Saudi Arabian national oil company.

In the event, which ran from 8 p.m. Friday until 8 a.m. Sunday, participants in teams of up to four were tasked with creating original technologies in one of four tracks under the theme “Hack 4 Impact”: Smart Cities, Health and Mental Health, Sustainability, and Open Source Data.

But in interviews, nearly a dozen participants criticized HackHarvard for focusing on sustainability while allowing Aramco — considered responsible for more than 4 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions since 1965 — to sponsor the event for a second year in a row.

“Aramco was kind of surprising because when I think of Aramco, I think oil,” said Christian J. Wilkins, a junior at Michigan State University. “I was like, ‘Where does the software come in?’”

Other students said Aramco’s involvement made HackHarvard’s commitment to sustainability seem insincere.

“It’s very ironic that Aramco is sponsoring and one of the tracks is sustainability. Come on HackHarvard. Do a better job,” said Sami Nourji, a junior at Brown University.

Aramco recruiter Kira Worysz, who spoke at the opening ceremony, defended Aramco’s involvement in the event in an interview.

“We’re in the business of getting oil out of the ground and bringing it to the world, but at its root, we’re a technology company,” Worysz said.

She added that she promoted an Aramco internship that “revolves around sustainability” at the event’s recruiting fair.

An Aramco spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Jerry B. Zhang ’27, a co-director of the event, said that “Aramco reached out to us and they were interested in being one of our major sponsors.”

He added that the event was a way for Aramco to explore sustainable alternative technologies.

“It’s completely reasonable for sponsors to essentially explore alternative outlets to their existing,” he said.

In a statement, HackHarvard defended Aramco’s sponsorship of the event.

“We are a non-profit organization and any funds we receive from sponsors go toward providing a free hackathon for all attendees,” the group wrote. “Without Aramco’s sponsorship, we would not have been able to provide essential resources for participants.”

Other sponsors for the event included Checkbook, Hudson River Trading, Harvard Undergraduate Data Analytics Group, Bloomberg, RedBull, and Telora.

Despite the criticism from some participants, others said they approved of Aramco’s involvement in the event.

Syed Shazli, a sophomore at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said that Aramco might want to “see some ideas and find out how they can end up implementing some of them.”

“Maybe they want to optimize being as environmentally efficient as possible, even though they’re the company that they are,” he said.

Amrit Subramanian, who was on the winning team from Amrita University in Coimbatore, India, called Aramco a “great company.”

“Even though they’re drilling oil for us, they do really care about a lot on sustainability,” he said.