Some Ethical Oversights

YOU'D THINK ethics would be the least of Harvard's problems, It has two ethics programs. It has professorships in ethics. The University boasts about its commitment to strong ethics. President Derek C. Bok writes about ethics. His wife is an ethicist.

Not surprisingly, Harvard has a handful of oversight committees to make sure its officers act ethically. (The Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (CCSR) and the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) are only the most well known.) But when you look closer, Harvard constantly subverts its own teachings about ethics. These committees don't cover very much of Harvard. And in the limited areas they do cover, Harvard deprives them of real power.

WHEN IT COMES to money--especially donations--the University sets few limits on itself. In recent years, Harvard has made several deals of dubious propriety in order to secure funding.

Last fall, when Cambridge received a visit by Saudi Arabian Prince Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud--whose shady past included allegations of kidnapping and police bribery--Harvard shamelessly rolled out the red carpet. With Harvard's approval, dozens of University police officers moonlighted as private security guards for the prince, ignoring attacks on Harvard students by the prince's bodyguards and short-staffing the Harvard Police Department. Harvard finally banned its officers from working for the prince--after he had donated millions to the Medical School.

At the end of his visit, the prince was sent off with a fancy Harvard banquet, and Harvard was left with a Prince Turki Professorship in Urology. How appropriate.

By pursuing an endowed chair from a funding source of such dubious morals, Harvard demonstrated its willingness to sell its soul to the devil. Clearly, the University did not allow Prince Turki's record to stand in the way of a sizeable donation--something a committee overseeing the gifts process would have done if given a chance.

Harvard's morally bankrupt practice of awarding preferential treatment to athletes and children of alumni in its admissions process also demonstrates a gap between Harvard's words and Harvard's deeds. It shows a need for a new kind of oversight--one that holds Harvard to a more rigorous ethical standard, and not just a Harvard scale that defines the pool of possible misdeeds.

We have long claimed that despite its stated interest in fostering economic and ethnic diversity, Harvard subverts its purportedly meritocratic admissions process by lowering its standards substantially for these two groups. We have long claimed that athletes and legacies received much more than "tiebreaking tips." But until a Department of Education probe last winter, we had no proof. Now, although Dean of Admissions William R. Fitzsimmons '67 still denies it, the statistics have borne us out. So have comments admissions officers scribbled on the folders of admitted athletes--"weak candidate, but a heck of a hockey player..."--and legacies--"Without lineage, there would be little case. With it, we'll keep looking..."

We entirely agreee with Fitzsimmons's assertion that talented athletes--just like fine musicians--have a place at Harvard. But Education Department report clearly refuted his claim that recruited athletes are treated like musicians. The fact that athletes scored significantly lower on every single category used to judge applicants over a ten-year period with the sole exception of athletic rating, and the very existence of that rating, makes it clear that football players are given a hard shove into Harvard that violinists can only dream of receiving.

For decades, the Admissions Office has done its thing in secrecy, it has been silently and methodically perpetuated a Harvard aristocracy. Why does Harvard do this? It wants alumni money. Harvard thinks (falsely, we believe) that alumni will not make gifts to Harvard if their kids are not admitted. Conversely, Harvard expects alumni with children who do get in to give a lot more than their peers. So Harvard forfeits its own ideals in order to lick alumni boots that don't need licking.

Finally, Harvard's oversight committees lack the scope they need to ensure that the University plays fairly on Wall Street.

Just recently, top employees of Harvard Management Company (HMC), which handles the University's investment portfolio, were found to own personal stock in the complex holding companies where Harvard has much of its endowment invested.

This blatant conflict of interest could have been avoided with a greater sense of propriety on the part of HMC and with a broader jurisdiction for the oversight groups. There is an entire dimension of Harvard's investment holdings that are not subject to scrutiny by the ACSR. And to call the CCSR an oversight group is like calling Bok a student activist.

AS A PRESTIGIOUS, non-profit institution of higher education, Harvard holds a uniquer place in society. Its goals are, for the most part, noble ones. When harvard made a deal with a sleazy prince to win an endowed chair, by a strict cost-and-benefit analysis, the University and its good work may benefit.

But as President Derek C. Bok wrote in his most recent annual report, "Universities attract the loyalty of faculty and alumni and, to a degree, the respect of the public precisely because they act for reasons other than money and will not compromise certain values simply to gain immediate monetary rewards. As universities grow more aggressive in finding ways to turn their activities into cash, their image subtly changes. They appear less and less as a charitable institution seeking truth and more and more as a huge commercial operation... the feelings it genders will not be quite the same as those produced by an institution that is prepared to forgo income, if need be, to preserve values of a nobler kind."

Neil Rudenstine should put Harvard's money where Bok's mouth is.

Derek Bok writes about ethics all the time. His wife is an ethicist. So what's the deal with Harvard's shady ethics?