A software entrepreneur, Democratic Party spoiler, attorney, physicist and journalist enter a ballot…
An unlikely slate of candidates has qualified for consideration on Harvard’s Board of Overseers, and four of them are on the record against affirmative-action policies, The Harvard Crimson reports:
On Wednesday, the quixotic quintet received confirmation that their petition effort was successful. In an email to [software entrepreneur Ron] Unz, Jeff Caldwell, the director of administration and senior associate secretary at the Office of Governing Boards, wrote that Unz had made the ballot. …
Along with Unz and [political spoiler Ralph] Nader, physicist Stephen D. Hsu, conservative writer Stuart S. Taylor, Jr., and attorney Lee C. Cheng ’93 will appear on the ballot distributed to alumni in advance of the May election.
Their campaign is all about transparency and diversity through opportunity, and they have a new website (“Free Harvard/Fair Harvard”) to tout it:
Harvard is now one of the world’s largest hedge-funds, with its $38 BILLION portfolio tax-exempt because of the college it runs as a charity off to one side.
The university’s annual investment income is twenty-five times larger than its net tuition revenue.
Meanwhile, thousands of student families are forced to spend most of their life-savings on $180,000 of total tuition, while relatively few non-affluent students even bother applying.
Paying tuition to a giant hedge-fund is unconscionable, and Harvard should immediately abolish all college tuition.
This is a huge threat to the status quo at Harvard, as the Crimson notes:
Unz and his colleagues argue that the enormous size of Harvard’s endowment, which reached $37.6 billion last fiscal year, would provide more than enough money to cover the cost of tuition for every undergraduate student. They also suspect that the College’s admissions practices could be discriminatory against Asian American applicants, and they are calling for more detailed public data about Harvard’s admissions practices.
Unz went to Harvard to campaign in person two weeks ago and drew the ire of President Drew Faust, who said the outsiders’ agenda would just help rich people and that Harvard’s financial aid is sufficient to get a diverse class.
Read the story and the campaign website.
RELATED: Harvard president would rather have less diversity than less tuition
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