Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Harvard University’s responses to recent natural disasters have been models for other institutions to follow. And that’s exactly the problem.

In the wake of last December’s devastating tsunami in Asia, University President Lawrence H. Summers announced that the University would match donations to 26 approved charities up to $100 per person. The effort raised over $500,000, with Harvard contributing $245,877 in matching funds. After Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi, the University again matched donations to eight charities up to $100 per person. All Harvard schools took in displaced students from Loyola and Tulane universities, with the College eventually accepting 36 undergraduates.

When compared to the responses of other schools, Harvard’s generosity outpaces almost every one. None of our peer Ivy institutions matched donations for the tsunami, and only Yale did so for Katrina. President Summers should continue to utilize the University’s unique resources to aid disaster victims in whatever ways possible. But matching donations for the tsunami and for Katrina have set a dangerous precedent—recently broken by Harvard’s choice not to match donations for the earthquake in Kashmir—that encourages our community to judge Harvard’s responses solely on a monetary basis. It is a slippery slope that the University must not traverse. For future disasters, Harvard should cease impersonating a charitable organization and instead focus on the unique and valuable ways it can help as an institution of higher learning.

Harvard is not a charity. Instead, the $25.9 billion the University has invested across the world in its endowment is earmarked for a similarly noble purpose. The educational and research efforts that Harvard sponsors around the globe are making this world a better place. Harvard grants allow low-income students to attend the College with no parental contribution. They sponsor groundbreaking medical research (which, among other things, has made Harvard the premier place for stem-cell research in the U.S.), and they sponsor initiatives to solve longstanding health, poverty, and cultural issues. Every cent that Harvard spends to enhance its public image by matching donations to disaster relief materially disadvantages these efforts—efforts which, ultimately, have more value than relief itself.

It is true that $25.9 billion could rescue much of Niger from famine. It could buy crates of second line antibiotics to combat multi-drug resistant tuberculosis worldwide. Harvard’s endowment could even de-mine the Korean border eight times over. In doing so, however, Harvard would forfeit the money necessary to cultivate the University’s unique contributions to education and research. The University would merely be accomplishing something that every charity is set up to do at the cost of what only Harvard can do.

Granted, no one is willing to empty the endowment for landmines. But if logical arithmetic deems it ludicrous to spend all $25.9 billion—because money spent on Harvard will go farther, in the end, than money spent on charity—then that same arithmetic also deems it wasteful to spend any money at all on charity. The University should play to its strengths and resist, on principle, the draining of its budget for arbitrary charitable causes.

Rather than giving into public relations pressure and matching monetary donations, the University should instead offer its unique contributions to disaster relief. Students, faculty, and staff should be encouraged to lead fundraising drives and donate independently. Harvard medical affiliates and other relevant staff should be dispatched to disaster areas (as they were in the wake of the tsunami and Katrina). And Harvard should lend its resources to displaced members of academia (like Loyola and Tulane students) as well. With these contributions, Harvard is already making a statement, loud and clear, that it is part of the national and the international community. Any extra money on the side will hurt Harvard more than it will help those in need.

It is impossible to defeat every counterargument to my proposal without seeming heartless. Every student, including me, would forfeit $3 million for a pub in Loker Commons to save five thousand lives in Niger, if it were that simple. The point, however, is that Harvard’s contribution, even $250,000 of it, is a drop in the bucket compared to both the need and the funds available for charity across the world. Summers’ discretionary fund, from which the matching donations are pulled, is better spent at Harvard to nurture what Harvard does best instead of flung piecemeal at disasters for PR effect. The University should draw the line now, with full confidence in its capacity for non-monetary contributions, before debates on which disasters demand responses undermine Harvard’s role as an academic institution.



Alex Slack ’06, a Crimson editorial chair, is a history concentrator in Leverett House.