The trustees considered the offer and turned him down. So Duke turned to Trinity College in Durham, North Carolina. (They sealed the deal in 1924.) Duke, who lived near Princeton, never forgot the rejection, Rudenstine says. A statue of him at the Princeton, New Jersey cemetery faces away from the school.
If administrators are unwilling to sell the name of the University, then how about just the College, or a small graduate school? After all, who would notice?
Harvard College, Rudenstine says, is out of the question, as is the Kennedy School of Government. But other grad schools?
"It would be very complicated," he says. "A lot would depend on what the money was going to be used for and whether there would be a need for it."
Owner Rosovsky says past donors have shown "some interest" and raised "vague questions" about naming a graduate school. "It never got to dollars and cents," he says.
In any case, Rosovsky said it would take a "mega-gift" to create the "Linsky School of Education." Rudenstine says the donation would have to be large enough to alter the school virtually beyond recognition.
"It would have to be a very substantial investment," the president says. He declined to give figures, but well-placed University sources guess it would take perhaps $100 million or more.
As Rudenstine knows all too well, there aren't many Harvard alumni with $100 million to kick around. That puts grad schools, not to mention the University as a whole, well out of reach.
Buildings and professorships, on the other hand...
A. Alfred Taubman got his own building for $15 million (donors usually give about one-third to one-half of the expected cost of the project, plus an endowment to pay for maintenance).
John S.R. Shad, of the Business School's plush Shad Hall, didn't have to pay anything, sort of. The fitness facility was a gesture of thanks for Shad's $20 million pledge to endow an ethics program.
It costs just $2 million for a tenured chair (as in, "Linsky Professor of Politics Michael S. Dukakis"), or $3 million for the deluxe-model University professorship, according to Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development Fred L. Glimp '50. Bargain hunters might want to endow a junior professorship for the low, low price of $1 million.
But real penny pinchers who want their name permanently fixed upon Harvard property should think on a smaller scale. Like a few books, maybe.
For just $1,000 (or as low as $250 for recent graduates), donors to the Faculty can be "Fund Associates" and get their names on bookplates in new library books.
For $2,500, donors can be "Harvard College Associates," each getting a book (such as Harvard spokesperson Peter Costa's Q and A) in addition to a bookplate. "John Harvard Associates" (donors of $5,000) get the same perks.
For $10,000, "President's Associates" receive all those prizes plus dinner with Rudenstine, often on the eve of the Yale game. Members of the "President's Council" ($25,000) also get a dinner.
Three million for a professorship? Twenty-five thousand for dinner?
John Harvard, wherever he is, must be enjoying a good laugh.
His 779 pounds, in 1992 U.S. currency, equates to about $75,000.