After the turmoil of the last several months, do you think the Board of Overseers should step in to reassure donors? If so, how?
Yes, I think so. Honestly, both governing boards, I think, on some level, have some responsibility to serve as a voice for governance. And I actually would say it’s not even just donors — it’s stakeholders beyond that that ought to hear from these governing boards in some way, shape, or form to just give a sense of how leadership is thinking.
Do you think the current Board of Overseers election process is fair? Would you support lowering the write-in candidate signature threshold?
I don’t know that I have enough information to judge if it’s fair or not, or that I’ve spent enough time with the right stakeholders to actually understand the facts. That being said, I don’t know that I would personally be in favor of lowering the threshold. There’s a real rigor to the nomination process that is designed to think about all stakeholders of Harvard University, not just alums. On some level, the write-in process really favors one stakeholder group, and that’s not necessarily the right way to think about the Harvard Board of Overseers — they do serve more than one constituent.
As Harvard now prepares to select Claudine Gay’s permanent successor, would you like to see any changes relative to the search process that selected Gay?
I don’t think I know enough about that process to comment on that, which is probably an indicator that one of the things that should be changed is a little more clarity on what the proposed process is.
Recently, Harvard has grappled with campus antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian racism. In light of these issues, what is your perspective on the current state of campus culture?
We all believe in Harvard’s role as a forum for robust ideas, civil discourse, the exchange of perspectives and growth from that exchange. And so the fact that there’s been this chilling effect from people not wanting to say anything for fear of saying something wrong is troubling. Because that’s really going against the fabric of what Harvard should be about.
I agree with a lot of the premises of what Garber was trying to articulate in a recent address, which is building a culture of trust, building a culture in which people are equipped with better tools for conducting civil discourse, creating a culture where there’s just less by way of trying to punish each other for having diverse viewpoints, and trying to embrace our common humanity.
Culture building doesn’t happen overnight. So I’m curious to hear more from and engage in more conversation if I’m elected to the Board. What are those strategies? What are practical ways that we can go about achieving that?
Do you support Harvard committing to institutional neutrality? In what areas should Harvard remain neutral?
Yes. My general sense is that if you’re thinking about Harvard’s primary mission as being an educator and a convener of ideas, particularly as a nonprofit — it’s funded by the public, belongs to the public, like the Boston Ballet — it really isn’t actually then the role of the University to take a strong stance on political issues. It frankly endangers your 501(c)(3) status, nor is it mission-aligned. And so I am generally in favor of institutional neutrality.
The University of Chicago, perhaps the most high-profile school to follow a policy of institutional neutrality, has cited that policy to reject calls from student activists to divest from certain financial interests, including in fossil fuels. Do you believe a policy of institutional neutrality should extend to investment decisions?
I think this is where you get a little bit into some hot water on just what constitutes political neutrality. I do think it’s actually too simplistic to think of things as either-or — there’s actually really a “yes, and” answer to that. You can divest from things like fossil fuels while still maintaining incredible returns. They don’t actually have to be in conflict with each other.
And meanwhile, there’s really kind of a values orientation to investments and thinking about those investments that’s possible for the endowment managers to take that doesn’t necessarily have to be at odds with market returns. So I would go so far as to say that I don’t know that that even needs to be an institutional neutrality matter.
How can Harvard respond to attacks against its credibility, or the credibility of higher education more broadly, if it is to be institutionally neutral?
The reason that I’m in favor, generally speaking, of institutional neutrality is because you do get into dangerous waters and scope creep and mission creep if the University is asked to play too big of a role in social activism versus creating the bedrock upon which the civic discourse and the activism can occur. I retrench to: What is Harvard’s role in society? It’s less to pull the weight of acting on contemporary issues and more about how it is enabling players within our society to be leaders on those issues.
And I think institutional neutrality actually buttresses Harvard on some level. Otherwise, Harvard is going to always be caught as a pole in the wind. There’s always going to be polarizing opinions on what Harvard should be doing. And they’re going to be at odds with each other. And so a little bit then, if you’re trying to cater to all you’re catering to none.
As I’m sure you know, Harvard will soon complete its first admissions cycle following the Supreme Court’s landmark decision curtailing the use of race in college admissions. As the University looks to maintain diversity at the College, do you support Harvard ending preferences for legacies and the children of donors?
I do support this. I’ve always considered those kinds of preferences to be slightly problematic. There’s some fair arguments for them. But I think they are problematic in the sense of the ways in which they might be perpetrating systems of privilege. And so especially now, if race-conscious admissions has come out of the cards, the only remaining thumbs on the scale, so to speak, are ones that don’t seem fair to have in place — if there really shouldn’t be any thumbs on the scale for these pre-identifying factors that are about your birth and identity rather than your own personal accomplishments. So I’d be in favor of ending those preferences.
The past decade has seen a number of allegations of serious misconduct against tenured Harvard professors, ranging from repeated sexual harassment to falsification of data and other research misconduct. Still, to date, there are no known cases of Harvard revoking a professor’s tenure. In what cases, if any, do you believe revoking tenure is justified?
This is another area where I have some thoughts, but I’m gonna go ahead and say that I’m not well-versed enough to have a more precise answer for that. So I’ll recuse myself from answering.
Do you support the creation of an Ethnic Studies department?
I do. I went to Yale undergrad. We have an Ethnic Studies department at Yale, and I benefited from a few courses in that department. I think that the responsibility of Harvard as an educator means educating folks who are prepared for civic discourse and understanding the society that they are entering. Understanding broad social constructs, like ethnic constructs, is actually a really interesting and important ingredient in preparing participants in civil society, so I’m in favor of it.
