Word: donor
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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After deprecating the students and faculty--with only an ephemeral warning about insensitive administrators--the letter moves to the specific problems of defining the conditions under which gifts will be rejected. The most obvious condition, he states, is when a donor "improperly restricts" academic freedom by insisting on choosing who shall be appointed to his endowed chair, or what sorts of doctrines his money shall be used to support. Harvard rejects donations of that sort, Bok says. If a donor wished to "promote the value of the free market," for instance, the money would be turned down. Curiously enough...
...fanatics who just won't be reasonable. "But no university could accept a Hitler Collection of Judaica or a Vorster Center for Racial Justice or a Capone Institute of Criminology." Or an Engelhard Library of Public Affairs? Where does Bok draw the line between an acceptable and an unacceptable donor...
...line becomes even fuzzier when Bok's theory addresses the question of gifts intended to attract "favorable publicity to improve a donor's image." On the one hand, Bok proudly points out he once turned down a gift from the Papadopoulos regime which seemed designed to gain the goodwill of Greek-Americans. On the other hand, Steiner admitted that Harvard had accepted the Atlantic Richfield Company's offer to build a public affairs forum, even though "I'm sure ARCO hoped (the naming of the Forum) could have some favorable impact on its negative public image." True, ARCO has been...
...Harvard knows in advance that a donor's actions are completely in conflict with University values, continues Bok, it should not take the money. Harvard should therefore strive to ignore as much as it can about the backgrounds of its potential donors, or so Bok seems to argue: "I am not yet persuaded that Harvard should have an obligation to investigate each donor and impose detailed moral standards." Once Harvard has accepted a gift, he protests, it should not renege on its agreement, because this "may inflict pain on relatives..." The pain inflicted on the donor's victims, of course...
Whether he knows it or not, this policy removes all of Bok's ethical problems: How can a donor's life and actions possibly be "in plain conflict with the values and ideals of the institution," when Harvard clearly has no values except economic survival...