Looking the ExxonMobil Gift Horse in the Mouth

March is marching by us with haste, but a report released earlier this month has given us pause. Think tank and polling firm Data for Progress, in collaboration with the Fossil Free Research campaign, claims that Harvard received at least $20 million from major fossil fuel companies between 2010 and 2020.

Regardless of its veracity, this claim disquiets us. It invites us to consider the dangers of donors influencing academic research. Foundational to Harvard University is a deep commitment to the truth. We live, breathe, and eat veritas — look at our buildings, gates, merchandise, and even waffles emblazoned with the motto. As a research institution, the principal incarnation of veritas here is our research. No funding should lead our researchers astray from their truth-seeking paths.

The relationships between donors, researchers, and entire departments create subtle networks of influence. Funding from fossil fuel firms and other unsavory companies may, intentionally or not, tug at these networks to produce research favorable to donor interests.

Harvard’s history offers examples of the powerful nature of these networks, even after the donation check clears. Jeffrey E. Epstein held longstanding ties with Harvard through millions of dollars worth of donations to our University. Epstein also cultivated tight relationships with some of our school’s chief administrators and premier intellectual experts, frequently hosting seminars that they would attend. That Epstein, who was not a faculty member, University affiliate, or even a College alumnus, held such close access to Harvard is alarming.

Epstein’s case may appear as an anomaly in terms of both closeness to Harvard and moral depravity of the donor. But broadly, much of undue donor influence seems hard to identify as such. We suspect misconduct often takes the form of propriety: a mere quid pro quo for a friend.

Analysts who worked on the report indicated difficulty collecting data on where specific donor money was spent, suggesting that the eyebrow-raising $20 million estimate may actually be a lower bound for the truth. This lack of financial transparency is an obstruction to veritas, and cannot continue.

We call on Harvard to develop a centralized database for tracking gifts. Given the large sum of donor money our school receives, information such as amount, source, and usage on all corporate donations should be publicly available — wherever such information can be legally disclosed. While privacy concerns may require that certain donors remain anonymous, the University ought to acknowledge industry connections of certain donors.

Building on top of this always accessible database should be regularly published reports that synthesize these granular individual donations into comprehensive conclusions. This is essentially what Data for Progress and Fossil Free Research did earlier this month, but the onus of accountability must be moved from these advocates onto the University itself. Integrity and truth are central tenets of the University’s research; it is their responsibility to uphold them.

Researchers, too, are obliged toward accountability in their pursuit of the truth. They should disclose funding-related conflicts of interests not only in each individual study, but also largely over their bodies of work and departments.

Transparency regarding our existing donations in tension with research is beneficial, but a more ethical funding framework simply wouldn’t create conflicts of interest in the first place. For future donations, the University should encourage donors not to earmark gifts for specific causes. This would allow the University to allocate funds and their attached names to departments in a way that is mindful of mitigating the pulls of influence exerted by donors.

Just as we thought an endowment investing in fossil fuels economically nonsensical for the future, we find climate change research funded by fossil fuels companies academically nonsensical. As a research institute devoted to veritas, there can be no interference by donations in our truth-seeking. The validity of our research is at stake.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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