Do We Deserve the Barker Center?

Icould tell Jonathan Alter '79 had gone to Harvard. Who else but an alum of a school with an $11 billion endowment would call on the super-rich to steer their money away from higher education?

Who else but a graduate of a University that, at a cost of $25 million, would gut its historic Freshman Union and rename it after a pair of donors, would declare: "New buildings are pleasant for the privileged students lucky enough to use them, and those big plaques are a nice ego reward for the benefactors. But are they really what society as a whole needs most right now?"

Of course not.

In his column in the Sept. 29 issue of Newsweek, Alter, once a Crimson executive, rightfully takes on the super-rich patrons of higher education-the Barkers, Annenbergs, Lokers, Belfers and Gateses of the world-for tossing dollars at the Ivy League.

Donors, Alter explains, have clear reasons for giving to colleges: they don't have to worry about how the money will be spent; they are contributing to a good cause; they are motivated by sentiment, and, of course, they are getting, at the very least, a nice plaque in return.

Alter offers a statistical perspective on this distribution of philanthropic wealth. Of the nearly $150 billion in total annual charitable contributions, nearly half goes to religious organizations, and 10 percent goes to higher education. Less than 10 percent goes to programs aimed at helping the poor.

In other words, there's a whole lot of giving going on, but too much of it stays within the circles of the well-off.

Let's take a more personal perspective on the problem. Last week, midway through my first section in the Barker Center, I started to think about Alter's column. Did we need this fancy new classroom, with its heavy wooden desks and high-tech security system? What had been so lacking in the seminar rooms in Sever, Emerson, Coolidge, Lowell and Memorial halls, or Lamont Library?

There are certainly several justifications for the Barker Center, such as the legitimate desire to centralize the humanities departments and the reasonable interest in preventing the aging Union from decaying into uselessness.

But couldn't Harvard at least refrain from self-congratulation long enough to question whether this was $25 million well-spent? After all, it's not as if the Barker Center is the last of the renovations.

The current money-grubbing Administration, led by Chief Fund-Raiser Neil L. Rudenstine, has announced plans to use some of the money raised by the ongoing $2 billion capital campaign to build a $25 million international studies center on Cambridge Street. Across the River, construction is underway on a massive new gymnasium for athletes.

Boylston Hall is the next academic building in line for an overhaul. Harvard Dining Services is in the midst of a long-term project to renovate the house dining halls. And there has even been talk of building a new undergraduate house.

Will the construction and renovation ever end? Not until donors stop giving in to the University's sales pitch and realize that their millions could be better spent preserving the rain forests, funding salaries of inner-city teachers or alleviating food and housing shortages here in America and world-wide.

Is this a naive hope? Unrealistic? Old-fashioned? Not at all. Not when Ted Turner has joined the bandwagon, pledging $1 billion to benefit United Nation's agencies in one of the largest charitable donations ever, and exhorting his super-rich colleagues to follow his lead.

Turner started his call to checkbooks in August 1996, when, incensed by a New York Times report that the very wealthy give away a smaller proportion of their wealth than other economic groups, he told Times columnist Maureen Dowd that the Forbes 400 list of millionaires "is destroying our country."

"These new super-rich won't loosen up their wads because they're afraid they'll reduce their net worth and go down on the list," he told Dowd. "That's their Super Bowl."

Turner suggested that somebody create an alternate list of the nation's top givers, so that the blindly status-driven could at least fight to be the top donor.

Michael E. Kinsley '72, a friend of Dowd's, and also once a Crimson executive, quickly picked up the challenge in his on-line magazine Slate (www.slate.com). The Slate 60 is now a mainstay of the magazine, listing the top 60 American donors for each quarter of the year.

Whether or not the list has encouraged high-stakes giving, it does make Alter's point clear: too many of the big gifts are going to higher education.

Topping the list this past quarter was Kathryn Albertson, the widow of a super-market-chain founder, who gave $660 million in stock to-unusually-primary and secondary schools in Idaho. Yet many of the weightier donations, including 19 of the top 29, went to universities to endow new chairs, pay for new student centers and fund additions to football stadiums.

But maybe, in calling mainly for a reallocation of donated dollars, Alter is aiming too low.

There is in fact enough wealth in American bank accounts to go around between social service organizations, environmental initiatives and well-funded universities-if only the super-rich would agree to be a bit more super, and bit less rich.

Two days ago, Forbes magazine, the target of Turner's ire, released its annual list of the nation's 400 richest people. This year, the list included 170 billionaires, up from 135 in 1996. When the magazine started the list in 1982, there were just 13 billionaires.

Atop the Forbes 400, as expected, is Harvard's favorite drop-out Bill Gates-who also happens to be the world's richest person.

Bill's net worth more than doubled over the last year, to $39.8 billion-meaning, as Newsweek noted, that his wealth grew by $400 million each week.

To put these figures in perspective, last year Bill made as much in an average week as a person earning $80,000 per year would make in a lifetime-a lifetime of 5,000 years.

Bill has started to open the coffers of late. This year he gave $215 million to provide Internet access to public libraries, and $25 million to Harvard for the construction of a new computer science building.

And yet, together these gifts comprise less than six-tenths of one percent of Bill's swelling estimated worth. And as he settles into his gluttonous Seattle-area palace, the Microsoft mogul says he feels like waiting until he is 50 or 60 to give away the rest of his immense fortune. "Giving away money effectively is almost as hard as earning it in the first place," he says. Sure, Bill. Tell that to someone-anyone-in need. Equally preposterous, the man in second place on the Forbes 400, investor Warren Buffett, has said he plans to wait until he and his wife have passed away to donate his $21 billion for the greater good.

Until then, let the poor suffer, the uneducated remain ignorant, the hungry starve and the forests wither. They say in political philosophy that justice delayed is justice denied. Gates, Buffett and their fellow super-rich should be ashamed of themselves. Generosity delayed is generosity denied.