A 1965 Forbes magazine article suggested that Engelhard even served as the model for Ian Fleming's notorious character, Goldfinger, who attempted to monopolize the world's gold reserves. (Fleming and Engelhard had some business dealings in London during the late '40s, just when Engelhard was starting to build his gold empire.) Engelhard never denied this possibility, and often seemed to delight in the suggestion.
KENNEDY School officials approached the Engelhards with its gift application last year after Charles' daughter, Sophie Engelhard, a 1977 Kennedy School graduate, suggested the family foundation as a possible source of funding. Kennedy School Associate Dean Ira Jackson, the Kennedy School classmate of Sophie who drafted the gift proposal, said his knowledge of Engelhard business operations at that time "was virtually nil, and still is. There was no research or probing, no background effort was made to study Engelhard's corporate activity," he said. "There never is when we're approaching a legitimate foundation that has made large gifts before. We're more concerned with the projects and orientation of the foundation, not the source of the money they give." Needless to say, the proposal Jackson drafted, requesting $1 million to build a library to be named for Charles Engelhard, won the quick approval of the family foundation, and by spring, the Kennedy School was graciously thanking the Engelhard Foundation for the gift in its alumni bulletin.
The Charles Engelhard Public Affairs Library is now a reality. Within a matter of months, its now-empty shelves will be filled with books. All that's left for Harvard to do is sing the praises of Engelhard's family at next week's dedication ceremony and to fasten the sign on the wall of the library that will make it hard for anyone to fail to recognize, however unconciously, the charity of Charles Engelhard.
With all this understood, there is no doubt a large element of moral catharsis involved in an exposition of Engelhard's misdeeds. Nevertheless, the question -- now clearly moot -- must be asked: Should Harvard have accepted this gift?
Some may argue that very little of the clean stuff circulates among the foundations that offer such gifts, so to start singling out the gifts of some as unnacceptable is hypocritical. A Kennedy School official, attempting to explain his approach to gifts such as the Engelhard million, said he found some validity in the argument President Lowell used to make, that "to reject one gift on moral grounds would be to certify the moral validity and rectitude of past gifts." This argument seems as much an abdication of social responsibility as Engelhard's explanation of why he chose not to criticize the South African government.
The moral calculus that determines whether individuals or institutions should accept money they feel is tainted is ultimately a subjective, individual one. There are certainly no hard and fast rules to invoke in making the determination. But criteria can be employed, distinctions can be made.
The argument that universities should always accept "no strings attached money" no matter how objectionable the source is a fairly forceful one. But here the standard definition of "no strings attached money" is in need of revision. A gift must not only have no conditions placed on its use; it must also be agreed that the source of the gift remain anonymous. Harvard, by allowing the Charles Engelhard Foundation to be publicly associated with the new facility legitimizes, however subtly, Engelhard's business practices.
This leads one to a second criterion for evaluating gifts: the currency of the reprehensible business practice in question. Some will argue that time cleanses dirty money. In a sense, it does, for if a family no longer earns its money in questionable ways, the public gift does not have quite the same self-serving legitimating impact. But while the Cabots may now be hundreds of years removed from the wealth they earned in the slave trade, the Engelhard family South African connection lives on, albeit without Charles W.
SHORTLY before his death, Engelhard, in a complicated series of transactions, sold off much of his South African interests to Anglo-American and other companies. The current Engelhard family parent corporation, Engelhard Minerals and Chemicals, still has diversified holdings in South Africa, but in the recent climate of intensified criticism of U.S. operations there, the Engelhard company has refused to disclose the extent of the assets and activities of its privately held South African subsidiary. In October, 1976, the company refused to cooperate with Sen. Dick Clark's committee studying U.S. investments in Southern Africa.
Meanwhile, the Engelhard family has shifted much of its formerly South African capital into the manufacture of pollution control devices. But somehow it doesn't seem to make their money much cleaner.
"The key to the misery of these people is to let them get enough to eat, enough clothes, a car and some financial stability. I don't care what the college professors say, I know this is what the black people of Africa want." --Charles W. Engelhard, 1966