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{shortcode-7f961eb8dd2ff76a326b2700d00312104cf17fd8}ason H. P. Kravitt never really opened his checkbook for Harvard.
For the past two years, the class of 1972 Harvard Law School graduate has sent the University a symbolic $1 check — a protest, he said, against how Harvard had “shamelessly” treated its Jewish students and alumni. Each check came with a letter explaining exactly why Harvard would not receive more.
A former co-chair of a major international law firm, Kravitt has funded programs at Johns Hopkins, Cambridge, and the University of Chicago — often in memory of his late son. Kravitt had long felt uneasy about Harvard’s direction. But it was the University’s muted response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that infuriated his hopelessness.
“I told them they were in sixth place on my donation list,” he recalled telling a Harvard gift officer. “They tried twice and then gave up.”
Kravitt’s wallet is still closed for now, but his eyes are not.
Each week, he reads a newsletter published by the 1636 Forum — a group of alumni launched in 2024 to track governance issues, flag campus developments, and help affiliates decide where, or whether, to give.
“I think 1636 is indispensable to anybody who wants to keep up on the details of what’s going on at Harvard,” he said.
He’s one of many paying closer attention.
“I’ve heard lots of donors say that Harvard is effectively an uninvestable asset at this point,” said 1636 Forum co-founder Samuel W. Lessin ’05, a former Facebook executive. “You don’t know when you give money where it’s going to be used for — whether it’s being used for things you believe in or not.”
Rather than promote unrestricted giving, the 1636 Forum points donors — from major benefactors to everyday alumni — toward specific programs, and initiatives that emphasize academic freedom, governance reform, and institutional accountability.
“We don’t want to not give,” he said. “We want to be supportive. We want to do it in an aligned way.”
Since its launch, the Forum has helped coordinate more than eight figures in earmarked donations, according to a person familiar with the donations.
Kravitt says he would now consider donating to Harvard — but only if the Forum asked for his support.
“I think the idea they’re trying to do — that by influencing enough people so it makes a difference — I think that’s a great idea,” he said.
‘An Insider-Outsider’
For years, Harvard’s biggest donors gave quietly — out of tradition, gratitude, and institutional pride. But after Oct. 7, that support began to sharpen into scrutiny, and for some, a search for leverage.
Harvard’s initial silence, and its slow-walked response to a widely criticized statement signed by 34 student groups that labeled Israel “entirely responsible” for the violence, jolted a cohort of high-profile alumni into public dissent. For many, giving, once reflexive, now meant asking whether Harvard still deserved their trust.
The first wave was outrage. Just three days after the attack, hedge fund manager Bill A. Ackman ’88 — who has since emerged as one of Havard’s fiercest critics — denounced his alma mater’s handling of the statement and called for then-Harvard President Claudine Gay’s resignation in a series of blistering posts on X.
“One should not be able to hide behind a corporate shield when issuing statements supporting the actions of terrorists,” Ackman wrote in one post.
Soon came exits. Within two weeks of the attack, Leslie H. Wexner — a longtime supporter of the Harvard Kennedy School — severed financial ties with the University. In a letter circulated widely on X, the Wexner Foundation cited Harvard’s “dismal failure” to take a clear and unequivocal stance against Hamas. Billionaire philanthropist Leonard V. Blavatnik soon followed suit, citing concerns over Harvard’s response to campus antisemitism.
Behind the big names, hundreds of people suspended gifts, signed open letters, and demanded accountability from Gay and the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body. But for some alumni, withdrawal was only the beginning — not the end.
Lessin launched a write-in campaign for the Board of Overseers — the University’s second-highest governing body — positioning himself as a reform candidate who could push for change from within. He called for a renewed focus on academic neutrality, stronger governance, and protections for free inquiry.
“Rather than giving up on Harvard,” he told his former boss, Facebook founder Mark E. Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan ’07 in a campaign video posted to YouTube. “I do think that this is a great moment to push a little bit, and I’m willing to do the work.”
Even with the endorsement of Zuckerberg, Chan, and a score of big-shot Harvard alumni, all in a carefully orchestrated media blitz, Lessin ended up within 100 votes of the threshold needed to appear on the ballot.
Still, Lessin insisted the campaign was never about a seat.
“There was an opportunity to write in. It was a good way to drive momentum,” he said in a January interview. “But this last year has really shown me the power of being an insider-outsider — the power of an independent organization.”
Instead, he turned his focus elsewhere — to a different kind of influence. Out of the campaign’s momentum came something longer-lasting: the 1636 Forum.
He teamed up with fellow venture capitalist and Harvard Business School graduate Allison Wu to launch what looked, at first, like a niche alumni outlet — a space for disgruntled affiliates to vent, organize, and fund a few causes they believed in.
Lessin’s first moves were modest, a few sit-down interviews with notable affiliates, and scattered donor calls. But behind the scenes, he built something more ambitious: a financial apparatus designed not just to support Harvard, but to steer it.
The 1636 Forum didn’t begin as a campaign for control. It began, in early 2024, as a newsletter.
‘Go-To Source’
Now, the 1636 Forum is something else entirely: a parallel institution with real leverage, and Harvard knows it.
Their model rejected alumni giving — broad, discretionary, and largely untraceable — in favor of precision. At the heart of the 1636 Forum is a simple ask to donors: don’t send your dollars without restriction to Harvard’s discretionary fund. Instead, fund specific faculty, departments, student programs, and institutional principles — academic freedom, governance reform, and pluralism — directly.
That includes grants to pluralism-related initiatives and support for the University’s Council on Academic Freedom and Intellectual Vitality initiative.
According to psychology professor Steven A. Pinker — a co-president of CAFH — the 1636 Forum has helped process gifts to fund CAFH’s new executive director position, guest speakers, and the council as whole.
“It isn’t just about building a squash court or a dorm — or even needing a chair,” Pinker said of the Forum. “They’re taking an active interest in the intellectual and academic direction of the University.”
The Forum has also provided input on some of the highest-dollar alumni gifts to Harvard in the last year — including a major donation from Sequoia Capital partner Alfred Lin ’94 to fund two professorships in artificial intelligence and civil discourse.
“Sam and 1636 did give me a few ideas and frameworks that help us think through the gift,” he said.
But Lin, like many donors, saw the Forum’s influence spreading. He said many of his peers, in Silicon Valley and across the country, also read the Forum’s newsletter.
Lori M. Goler — a former Meta official of 16 years — also celebrated Lessin’s focus on “building a community of alums who believe in Harvard.”
“1636 Forum is my go-to source for information on the most important issues facing Harvard,” wrote Goler, a Harvard Kennedy School and HBS graduate.
While several other alumni groups have emerged in recent years — some with newsletters of their own — none appear to match the Forum’s reach or donor influence. Dozens of prominent alumni, including major tech and finance figures, are regular readers of the Forum’s weekly briefings, which now land in more than 20,000 inboxes.
In August 2024, Lessin distributed a 93-slide report diagnosing what he found to be the largest issues at Harvard — politicization of academic curriculum, activist faculty, administrative bloat, and more — and listed, almost point-by-point, how donors could give for “maximal impact.”
Members of Harvard’s top brass also actively read the Forum’s newsletter, according to Lessin.
“In a joking way, a lot of people at a very senior level have made the obvious comment being like we love the newsletter,” Lessin said.
Lessin himself has also been invited to private calls with the top echelon of Harvard donors.
On May 1, he joined a call featuring Harvard Hillel Executive Director Rabbi Jason B. Rubenstein ’04, hedge fund manager Seth A. Klarman, and more than a dozen other top donors, according to two people familiar with the call.
‘Just Caution Everybody’
From the start, Lessin pitched the 1636 Forum as something Harvard doesn’t currently have — a transparent, independent alumni platform focused not on tradition or prestige, but alignment and accountability. He’s even gone as far as to call it a kind of parallel to the Harvard Alumni Association, a fresh channel for engagement in an era where many donors no longer write checks out of reflex.
“We’re not super interested in dealing with the HAA bureaucracy and what it’s become,” he said. “We think it’s far more powerful to operate on the outside and build something new.”
A Harvard Alumni Association spokesperson celebrated the “broad support” of alumni donors in a statement.
“We are also grateful for the thousands of donors who provide unrestricted, flexible support, often through the Schools’ annual funds, and who recognize the cumulative impact of their gifts on core priorities such as financial aid, teaching and research,” the spokesperson wrote.
But the future of Lessin’s model is far from settled, especially as some of Harvard’s most established allies push back.
During a pointed exchange in a fireside chat in November, former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers encouraged Lessin to exercise caution with his new model of donating.
“I would just caution everybody,” he said. “The University is an enormously complicated and subtle institution and trying to push it around with threats of not giving money and the like is not likely to be an effective tactic in achieving objectives.”
Months later, Summers has continued to urge restraint, saying that activist donors like Lessin should be more careful of their strategy as a result of the Trump administration’s relentless attack on Harvard’s federal funding.
“I think the 1636 Forum has been very constructive in presenting much needed perspectives to the University,” he said in an interview with The Crimson.
“I would hope that those who care about Harvard would continue to support Harvard, particularly at a difficult moment like the present, even if they have some concerns about policies being pursued,” Summers added.
Several other longtime contributors to Harvard, whose names adorn buildings across campus, echoed that warning — urging Lessin and others not to mistake influence for control.
Paul A. Buttenwieser ’60, the namesake of a University professorship and a former president of the Board of Overseers, said the model behind 1636 “certainly is a departure from what was standard in my day, which was you look to see what institution wanted and supported it.”
“I think also younger people don’t necessarily want to give a lot of money to support sort of legacy organizations,” he added.
Peter L. Malkin ’55, who funded the Malkin Athletic Center and a longtime Harvard donor, put it more bluntly.
“I have felt that donors have the right to make suggestions and indicate the areas of their interests,” Malkin said. “But I draw the line at specifically saying that I will give this gift only if you do the following.”
In their caution, Buttenwieser and Malkin reflect a more traditional ethos of alumni giving — one grounded in deference to the institution, not demands on it. For decades, their approach helped shape Harvard’s growth.
Still, even skeptics are paying attention to Lessin. Malkin, for one, doesn’t just read the 1636 Forum’s newsletter — he distributes it.
“I do distribute the 1636 to about 50 classmates, class of 1955,” he said. “I think they find it very, very interesting.”
Following Lessin’s lead, other alumni groups are beginning to adopt similar strategies. The Coalition for a Diverse Harvard is preparing to launch its own giving guide, and a newly formed independent alumni group at Columbia is developing a comparable model.
“We also want to make sure that people with an interest in support of the Coalition’s mission figure out the ways as best they can to get the biggest bang for the buck, even though their bucks may not be as big,” said Coalition board member Michael G. Williams ’81.
The Black Alumni Association has also made targeted giving efforts to initiatives, including the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, that align with their values.
The trend suggests that Lessin’s vision is no longer outlier — but a template.
“I think we are on our path candidly to having more reach and having more than the HAA,” Lessin said.
“We’re really helping Harvard with the donor story,” he added.
—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.
— Staff writer Abigail S. Gerstein can be reached at abigail.gerstein@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @abbysgerstein.
