Beyond his contributions to Harvard, Knafel donates his time and money to other “excellent” institutions. He sits on the board of Wellesley College, the alma mater of his late wife Susan Rappaport Knafel, and, just a few weeks ago, he went up to Andover to look at the site for a new building, as the head of an architectural committee to construct more facilities at the school—which he attended briefly before arriving at Harvard.

The Harvard Years

A native of Westchester County, Knafel lived in Winthrop House while an undergraduate—although he freely admits that his busy schedule and visits to Wellesley left him little time to spend there.

Knafel spent much of his time in his undergraduate years at The Crimson as the newspaper’s business manager. Knafel says he gained valuable real world business experience that he could later apply in future business ventures, but what he enjoyed most about The Crimson was the camaraderie among the editors.

Looking back on those years at the College, Knafel says he feels now that he and fellow students lacked a greater awareness of the world outside Harvard.

“We were really quite naïve,” he says. “We were brought up in a depression, and a war. It should have made us very sophisticated, but it didn’t.”

“The issues we had were inconsequential, frivolous concerns,” he adds.

The independence and individual responsibility that Harvard required of him as an undergraduate was a formative experience for Knafel. He says the lack of advising was an incentive for him to take initiative and make decisions on his own.

“We really were thrown into an adult world,” he says.

Knafel says one major regret of the undergraduate career is having taken the class, Democratic Theory and Its Critics. This class was the only one in which the economics concentrator received a grade of less than a B.

Disappointed with his low grade, the young Knafel approached the grader about it, only to receive the harsh response that he should be lucky to have gotten the grade he did.

After graduating from the College, Knafel recalls that he wanted to do anything to stay in Cambridge. His interest in business made Harvard Business School (HBS) seem to be the natural choice.

Knafel said he was surprised to find a “moat” between Cambridge and the B-school. While he was initially disappointed at his distance from the gates of the College, Knafel excelled at HBS and said he enjoyed his time there.

In his first year, Knafel won a Baker Scholarship, the school’s highest scholastic honor.

He founded Vision Cable in 1971 and continued to serve as chair until its sale in 1981—although he has continued to be deeply involved in the industry, serving on the board of Insight Communications Company, Inc. since 1985, as a director of a broadband communications company, as well as biotech and other private firms.