Harvard Faculty Overwhelming Donated to Democrats Ahead of 2024 Election
Members of Harvard’s governing boards and faculty donated more than $2.3 million to political candidates and causes ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, a Crimson analysis found.
Members of Harvard’s governing boards and faculty donated more than $2.3 million to political candidates and causes ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, a Crimson analysis found.
The analysis, which comes just 10 days before Americans head to the polls, found that 94 percent of political contributions from Harvard affiliates went to Democratic candidates, with the majority going toward Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
The liberal skew of faculty and governing board members’ donations continues a long-standing trend at Harvard. In the 2020 election cycle, affiliates also donated overwhelmingly to Democratic candidates.
The Crimson analyzed thousands of records from the Federal Elections Commission for all members of the Harvard Corporation and Board of Overseers, as well as professors within the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Harvard Law School.
The Harvard Corporation
Members of the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing board, donated more than $790,000 to political candidates and political action committees during the 2024 election cycle.
Roughly 95 percent of those funds went to Democratic candidates.
Kenneth C. Frazier, the former CEO of pharmaceutical company Merck &. Co, donated the most out of the 12 members of the Corporation. Frazier, who was elected to the board in February, contributed nearly $307,000 to Democratic candidates, including $100,000 to a PAC affiliated with Harris.
Kenneth I. Chenault, the chairman of venture capital firm General Catalyst, donated almost $250,000 exclusively to Democratic candidates. Chenault, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August, is regarded as a top candidate to serve as Treasury Secretary in a Harris administration, according to Semafor.
One name notably missing from the list of top benefactors this year was Senior Fellow Penny S. Pritzker ’81, who served as Commerce Secretary under former President Barack Obama. Pritzker has previously led the Corporation in political donations.
While Pritzker, a billionaire heiress to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, donated more than $861,000 leading up to the 2020 presidential election and more than $760,000 ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, she has only given roughly $23,000 to political candidates ahead of this year’s election. Her brother J.B. Pritzker currently serves as the governor of Illinois.
Penny Pritzker heavily supported her brother in his bid to bring the 2024 DNC to Chicago, which included offering to foot the bill for the convention.
Harvard Treasurer Timothy R. Barakett ’87 and Joseph Y. Bae ’94, the co-chief executive officer of private equity firm KKR, were the only members of the board to donate to Republican candidates.
Barakett, the CEO of private investment firm TRB Advisors, donated $6,600 to Curtis Bashaw, a Republican running for Senate in New Jersey.
Bae, who joined the board in February, donated $33,000 to three political action committees associated with Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), and Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.). He also donated $6,600 to Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.).
Other members that donated to political candidates included Diana L. Nelson ’84, who donated more than $58,000; Theodore V. Wells, who contributed more than $83,000; and former Obama cabinet official Karen Gordon Mills ’75, who donated $26,000. The Crimson was unable to find records of political contributions from the four other members of the board.
Both Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 and Provost John F. Manning ’82 did not donate to political candidates in 2023 or 2024, according to FEC filings.
A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment on the contributions.
Harvard Board of Overseers
Members of the Board of Overseers, the University’s second-highest governing body, made more than $700,000 in political contributions leading up to this year’s elections.
Todd Y. Park ’94, the former chief technology officer in the White House during the Obama administration, donated the most to political candidates by a significant margin, accounting for approximately 94 percent of the board members’ donations.
Park donated nearly $670,000 to Democratic PACs and to 47 of the 50 Democratic state parties as well as the DC Democratic State Committee.
Park was followed in total donations by Alice Chen, the chief health officer of healthcare giant Centene Corporation, who contributed $20,000 to Harris’ presidential campaign.
Several members donated to Harris’s campaign or other Democratic PACs immediately following President Joe Biden’s announcement on July 21 that he was withdrawing from the 2024 presidential race and endorsing Harris to succeed him.
Sangu J. Delle ’10, the CEO of tech healthcare firm CarePoint, donated $300 to Harris’ campaign and the Democratic-affiliated PAC ActBlue on July 22 — his first and only political contribution this election cycle. Jayson U. Toweh, a Ph.D. student at Stanford University, also made his first donation on the day after Biden withdrew, donating $47 to ActBlue.
Roughly half of the donations from Danielle A. Feinberg ’96, a visual effects supervisor at Pixar Studios, were made after Biden dropped out of the race.
Overseers donated almost exclusively to Democratic PACs and campaigns, with the one exception being Christopher B. Howard — the chief operating officer at Arizona State University — who donated $500 to the bipartisan With Honor PAC, which is focused on electing military veterans.
Reshma M. Saujani, the CEO of Girls Who Code, donated $14,000 to Democratic PACs and political candidates, including $2,000 to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).
The Crimson could only find records of political donations from 11 of the 30 members on the board.
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School professors have contributed roughly $320,000 to political candidates since January 2023. Like their colleagues at other corners of the University, almost all of their donations went to Democratic campaigns.
Law and Economics professor Louis E. Kaplow was responsible for more than half of the total donations from HLS faculty members, with his donations exceeding $148,000 this election cycle. Kaplow donated more than $10,000 to American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful pro-Israel lobbying group that has donated more than $41 million dollars in the 2024 election cycle.
Kaplow also made seventeen contributions of $6,600, the maximum individual contribution allowed by the FEC, including to an array of AIPAC-endorsed Democratic and Republican congressional candidates, including both House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
Other major donors at HLS included professors Michael J. Klarman, Joseph W. Singer, and former Dean Martha L. Minow, all of whom donated exclusively to Democratic candidates.
Klarman wrote in a statement to The Crimson that the reason for the HLS faculty’s overwhelming support of Democrats was “clear and pretty obvious.”
“Of course, Harvard faculty — and especially law faculty — are unlikely to support a party whose presidential candidate says he will ‘terminate the Constitution,’” Klarman wrote, referencing past comments made by Trump.
Interim Dean John C.P. Goldberg and his deputy deans I. Glenn Cohen and Maureen E. “Molly” Brady ’08, who have been named as candidates to serve as the school’s next dean, did not donate to any political candidates this election cycle.
Their colleagues, Deputy Dean John C. Coates and vice deans Gabriella Blum and David B. Wilkins ’77, all contributed to Harris’ presidential campaign.
Not a single HLS professor directly donated to Trump’s reelection campaign. Of the 118 professors at HLS, only 38 donated to a political cause this election cycle, according to a Crimson analysis.
The only member of HLS faculty to exclusively donate to Republican candidates was Stephen E. Sachs ’02, who serves as faculty adviser to the conservative HLS Federalist Society.
Sachs, a former Crimson Editorial chair, made several small contributions of $250 or less to AIPAC, Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the National Republican Congressional Committee.
In a statement to The Crimson, Sachs wrote that there were so few donations to Republican candidates because Republicans are underrepresented on law school faculties.
“Empirical research has suggested that Republicans are underrepresented among law professors as compared to lawyers generally, especially when adjusting for qualifications and citations,” Sachs wrote.
“The fact that HLS professors donate to Democratic candidates is less important than the fact that there are remarkably fewer conservative professors than there are qualified conservative candidates in the legal profession,” he added.
Harvard Kennedy School
At the Harvard Kennedy School, professors have donated nearly $133,000 to political candidates since 2023 — approximately 40 percent more than the figure from 2018, the last time The Crimson analyzed HKS faculty donations.
HKS professor Deval L. Patrick ’78 — the first Black governor of Massachusetts — led the faculty in politician contributions with $52,500 in donations to Democratic candidates, including Sen. Amy J. Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Rep. Elissa B. Slotkin (D-Mich.)
The school’s faculty contributed overwhelmingly to Democratic candidates. HKS professor Linda J. Bilmes ’80 bucked the trend by contributing $50 earmarked for Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign to Republican PAC WinRed, though she also donated $200 to ActBlue.
“Democrats have become to some extent the party of the well-educated, and so in this sense it is not a surprise that Harvard professors, who are very highly educated, would skew strongly Democratic,” Archon Fung, director of the HKS Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, wrote in a statement.
“The pattern that you observe is consistent with the broader trend of political polarization by education,” he added.
Kennedy School professor Mark L. Fagan was the sole HKS professor to contribute to an independent campaign, donating approximately $209 to Shelane Etchison, an independent congressional candidate in North Carolina.
HKS Dean Jeremy M. Weinstein, whose tenure started in July, did not donate to any political campaigns during his time as a professor at Stanford or since arriving in Cambridge. Weinstein, however, has worked in several Democratic administrations, including from 2014 to 2015 as the deputy to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha J. Power, a former professor at HKS.
Of the 205 professors, assistant professors, and adjunct lecturers at the Kennedy School, only 32 donated in the last year.
HKS spokesperson Daniel B. Harsha declined to comment.
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
In line with governing board members and professors across the University, members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences donated primarily to Democratic candidates and PACs.
FAS faculty members have contributed nearly $430,000 since January 2023. The Harris Victory Fund and Harris for President received the bulk of the donations — $176,945 in total.
The donations from FAS members also spiked close to major milestones in this year’s tumultuous presidential contest, including the day that Biden withdrew from the race and Harris secured the nomination.
On July 21 — the day Biden announced his decision to step aside — FAS faculty members donated more than $8,400 to various Democratic groups. When Harris unofficially secured the Democratic nomination the following day, the faculty members donated nearly $18,000, and within a week of Biden’s withdrawal, they had contributed over $46,000 to Democratic candidates and groups.
On Aug. 6, Harris announced that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz would be her running mate, drawing more than $14,000 in donations to Democratic candidates and PACs from FAS faculty.
The DNC also resulted in a spike in donations from FAS members, with the group donating more than $14,000 over the four-day convention.
Former President Claudine Gay donated $1,000 to Harris’ campaign on Aug. 8, marking her first political donation recorded by the FEC since she resigned in January 2024. Professor Gregory Nagy made the most individual contributions out of all the FAS members — with 630 individual donations totaling $17,000.
Only seven professors donated to Republican PACs and candidates. Dean of Social Sciences Lawrence D. Bobo and Biology professor James Hanken made small contributions to WinRed, the fundraising platform for the GOP. Bobo also donated more than $234 to Chris Christie’s presidential campaign. Folklore and Mythology professor Stephen Mitchell donated $50 to the Republican National Committee and over 330 dollars to WinRed.
History professor James Hankins donated $1,230 to Governor Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign between September 2023 and January 2024. Hankins’ final donation came only five days before DeSantis withdrew from the race.
Harvard Business School professor Amy C. Edmondson ’81 — who holds a joint appointment at the FAS — also donated $1,041 to Aaron Dimmock, a Republican candidate who ran for Congress in Florida. Dimmock challenged Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) in the Republican primary, but ultimately failed to unseat the incumbent.
FAS spokesperson James M. Chisholm declined to comment for this article.
Methodology
Contribution records were cross-checked based on all known variants of names and against publicly available employer data. Federal election laws require donors to truthfully disclose their occupation and employer. Contributions from faculty with appointments at multiple schools across the University were counted for each of their respective schools.
Federal law also requires the disclosure of political spending that exceeds $200 on a single candidate within an election cycle. The data do not include contributions made to independent expenditure campaigns, super PACs, or nonprofit groups organized under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code which engage in electioneering communications.
The data includes all contributions made between January 1, 2023 and September 30, 2024. FEC data is updated on a quarterly basis.
—Staff writers Emma H. Haidar, S. Mac Healey, William C. Mao, Neil H. Shah, Saketh Sundar, and Dhruv T. Patel contributed reporting.