At the COUR dinner Friday, Univeristy President Drew G. Faust and Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow James R. Houghton ’58 flank philanthropist David Rockefeller ’36, whose $100 million gift was announced that morning.

They descended on Cambridge in droves this weekend to see current undergraduates, hear lectures from faculty, and, of course, be wined and dined.

No, not prefrosh. Millionaires.

Dozens of wealthy donors came to town for the annual symposium of the Committee on University Resources (COUR), a little-known body that has but one requirement for membership: donate $1 million or more to Harvard.

The weekend’s events kicked off with a 214-person dinner at the Charles Hotel on Friday night that included Harvard’s highest administrators and development officers, according to a seating chart obtained by The Crimson.

Though programs for the weekend dedicated the symposium to “Celebrating Students,” University President Drew G. Faust highlighted something else during her welcoming remarks, according to attendees.

“The Faust address was a celebratory address remarking on [David] Rockefeller and his $100 million donation to the University,” said Lam N. Ho, a Harvard Law School student who attended the event and spoke at a panel Saturday. “That was basically the entirety of the speech that evening.”













Faust leans in to speak to David Rockefeller whose $100 million gift was the subject of her speech after the dinner Friday night.




David Rockefeller ’36 spoke after Faust about the motivations for his gift—the largest by an alumnus in Harvard’s history.

The donation, announced Friday morning to coincide with the COUR symposium, includes $70 million for international programs and $30 million for the arts.

The COUR dinner also hosted a reorganized University Development Office, designed to place greater emphasis on fundraising for cross-school priorities and lay the groundwork for a potential capital campaign.

All four members of the capital gifts team, which was created last month, dined with COUR members Friday, along with Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development Tamara E. Rogers and two of her predecessors in that position.

(Click above for higher quality image.)

Also in attendance were former University Presidents Neil L. Rudenstine and Derek C. Bok, said COUR member Paul J. Zofnass ’69.

Ten of the 14 deans of Harvard’s schools were present, while the deans of the College, Harvard Business School, Harvard Medical School, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study were not in attendance, according to the seating chart.

In an interview earlier Friday, Faust said she hoped Rockefeller’s donation would serve as an example of how donors can find common ground between their own interests and their alma mater’s.

“It models a kind of philanthropy...that identifies connections between something that’s meaningful to an individual and meaningful in an institution,” she said. “We want to honor that generosity and that love for Harvard.”

Rockefeller had planned to donate $75 million for international programs in 2006 but withdrew because of the administrative turmoil following the departure of former University President Lawrence H. Summers, according to a 2006 report in The Wall Street Journal.

Instead, Rockefeller downgraded his 2006 gift to $10 million for the eponymous David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

The new arts component of the gift will fund renovations to the Fogg Art Museum and provide funds for Faust to implement recommendations of the University-wide Arts Task Force that she convened last fall as her first major act in office.

Rockefeller said in an interview Friday that he decided to donate to the arts as well as the international projects—that had until then been the focus of his Harvard philanthropy—because of his longstanding love of the arts.

“The arts, and painting in particular, have long been a very great interest of mine,” he said. “It’s not surprising that [international programs] expanded to the art field as well because there are a lot of exciting things going on in the art field in other countries of the world.”

Though the weekend symposium featured all-star panels, Harvard’s highest ranking administrators, and pricey cuisine, some guests said the event’s focus may have been more style than substance.

“One has to contextualize an event like this,” Ho said. “It was very encouraging and supportive, but there needs to be a recognition that the major purpose of this was to present the best side of Harvard.”

The event at the Charles was closed to the press, and four Crimson reporters covering the event were asked to leave by staffers from the Development Office before the start of the keynote speeches.

—Staff writers Aditi Balakrishna and Paras D. Bhayani contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Clifford M. Marks can be reached at cmarks@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Nathan C. Strauss can be reached at strauss@fas.harvard.edu.