Don’t Discourage Donors

This past Sunday, Randy Cohen, The New York Times “Ethicist,” wrote that to give to Harvard is to “offer more pie to a portly fellow while the gaunt and hungry press their faces to the window.” Rather, he argues, if donors truly want to “promote education as a form of social justice,” they should give their money to community colleges, all-black colleges, smaller Catholic schools, and the like.

Of course, Cohen is right to point out that many other institutions of higher learning across the country need donations in order to provide their students with the basic components of a stimulating education. And we echo his call for donors to consider the potential impacts of their gifts before they actually make a donation: All too often, it seems, individuals with the best intentions give to certain causes or institutions only to realize that their donations could have made more of a difference elsewhere.

But Harvard is certainly an institution that deserves and effectively utilizes the gifts it receives from its supporters. And while we take issue with the minimal impact Cohen believes that donations to Harvard inevitably have, we most object to what is perhaps the crux of his argument, which is that America’s oldest university has less of a “moral claim” on donations than do other colleges and universities with fewer resources.

First of all, any act of philanthropy, in the sense that an individual parts with personal resources for a positive cause in which he or she believes, ought to be equally called “moral.” That Cohen has conceived of a certain schema on which to rank the morality of these identical actions is highly problematic. After all, who is really to judge negatively a person choosing to make a charitable donation? In a dismal economic climate like this one, when charitable giving has reached one of its lowest levels in recent history, it is misguided to complain about the recipients of donations instead of celebrating the few who are still able and willing to part with money for causes they support. Even though he encourages giving elsewhere, Cohen’s claims about the alleged “morality” involved only serve to discourage the few who can still afford to make charitable donations.

And Cohen succumbs to the common misconception that Harvard’s endowment—admittedly still the largest of any university—is merely an ocean of cash that can be accessed on a moment’s notice, which is not at all the case. Sometimes, as the many budget cuts Harvard has made in the last year demonstrate, a wealthy organization still has a very real need for donations.

But perhaps the most confusing part of the piece is why Cohen has chosen to label Harvard as a less “moral” cause than any other. Ultimately, Harvard is one of the most positive organizations that can be found in society, with contributions ranging from groundbreaking academic research to educating many of our nation’s leaders. With perhaps the most generous financial-aid initiative of its kind, the university has actively transformed itself from an enclave of the American social establishment into a vibrant intellectual community filled with individuals from the around the country and across the globe, an instrument of achieving (at least a small part) of the social mobility so central to the American mythos. Moreover, it is a fallacy to conclude that the organization with the most money, therefore, has the least need.

In this fundamental sense, we fail to see how Harvard has any less “moral claim” on the philanthropic donations it relies on in order to continue serving its very worthy mission.