A Promising Campaign

The upcoming capital campaign is an exciting and long overdue development. The last capital campaign ended in 1999, and our peer schools have raised record sums of money since then. This campaign is an exceptional opportunity to strengthen the University and develop our campus and programs for a world that is very different than it was 14 years ago. The University should aim high, not just in terms of the fundraising total but also in its priorities and vision for the future.

There are few who doubt that this capital campaign is necessary. Many of our Houses have long since passed the point where quaint and charming turns into hopelessly outdated and, in some cases, borderline dilapidated. The School of Engineering and Applied Sciences shows real promise, but it needs more funding to grow. In a time of federal budget austerity, the new capital campaign will allow the University to fund crucial basic research even as the government fails to do so. There is so much that is great about Harvard and so much to be done.

The performance of recent capital campaigns at our peer schools is encouraging, but their success underlines the urgency of this campaign. Stanford’s recent campaign aimed to raise $4.3 billion. Instead, it raised $6.23 billion. The Stanford Challenge, as the campaign was called, supported various education and research initiatives, including $2.33 billion earmarked specifically for seeking solutions to global problems. Yale managed to renovate its residential colleges largely without the help of a capital campaign, but that school’s  renovations put their residential amenities ahead of Harvard’s—a competitive disadvantage in the fight for the most talented college students. Harvard should not fall behind as our peers build up their fundraising.

As Harvard determines the priorities for the campaign, administrators should give students and faculty a stake in the planning, prioritizing, and fundraising. This campaign will be a University-wide effort, so it is crucial to involve the entire University community. Students and faculty have day-to-day knowledge that will be crucial in planning big-ticket items like House renewal and other campus improvements.

Above all, the University should be bold. Some projects, like the roughly $1 billion House renewal, are expenditures of necessity. As important as they are, those projects will not define the future of the University. It is projects like the new developments in Allston, an undergraduate student center, funding for cutting-edge research, and many more projects still to be announced that will advance the University’s mission and help the University adapt to an ever-changing world. The University’s goals should reflect tremendous optimism and high hopes for the future.