Debate is currently swirling over whether the Trump Administration may attempt to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status regarding what many believe is its inadequate response to antisemitism on campus and related issues. Harvard is not only America’s oldest university; it is also the nation’s oldest corporation and also the first eleemosynary corporation, that is, one dedicated to charitable or benevolent purposes. Though now a secular university, Harvard’s 1650 corporate charter, which is still in legal effect, dedicates the institution to the pursuit of both “knowledge and godliness.” Many might argue that modern Harvard, having long ago jettisoned its Puritan roots, now pursues ungodliness instead!
John Adams made sure that Harvard’s corporate status became enshrined in the Massachusetts Constitution. Chapter V, Articles I–III, deal specifically with Harvard:
[I]t is declared, that all the said gifts, grants, devises, legacies and conveyances, are hereby forever confirmed unto the president and fellows of Harvard College,… according to the true intent and meaning of the donor or donors….
Current debate has focused on whether Harvard’s recent actions are contrary to “public policy” as defined by the Administration. This relates back to the 1983 case, Bob Jones University vs. United States 461 U.S. 574 (1983), where the U.S. Supreme Court held that an institution receiving tax-exempt status must be “in harmony with the public interest, and the institution’s purpose must not be so at odds with the common community conscience as to undermine any public benefit that might otherwise be conferred.”
The battle over “public policy” and whether Harvard may have violated it with regard to failing to deal adequately with antisemitism will continue to be played out in the courts and in the court of public opinion. But there is another issue that also deserves scrutiny, and that is the question of donor intent with respect to religion-based bequests to Harvard.
Though now in the minority, there has always been a remnant of strong religious faith at Harvard. This was captured in Kelly Kullberg’s 1996 book, Finding God at Harvard: Spiritual Journeys of Thinking Christians. In 2023, Harvard Law School’s Program on Biblical Law and Christian Legal Studies (yes, there is such an entity!) sponsored a unique gathering of Christian alumni called “Faith & Veritas 2023.” This gathering, plus the establishment of the Veritas Forum, which was founded by Kullberg (who is no longer part of the organization), promotes Christian values and discussions about what faith means, especially on Ivy League campuses, beginning at Harvard. But not because the university was pleased to be a facilitator. With few exceptions, most such efforts or requests over the decades have either been shunned, sidelined or dismissed by ‘official’ Harvard.
Donor intent is governed by a legal doctrine known as cy pres, where a legal authority attempts to determine whether or not an entity that has received donations or bequests has made every reasonable effort to fulfill the original intent of the donor. In 1898, a widow named Nannie Yulee Noble established the annual William Beldon Noble Lectures at Harvard in memory of her husband, who had been a divinity student. The bequest was very specifically intended “to continue the mission of her husband, whose supreme desire was to extend the influence of Jesus as ‘the Way, the Truth, and the Life,’” as well as serving as an “inspiration to Christian Missions for the conversion of the world.” The bequest’s statutes added that the “scope of the Lectures is believed to be as wide as the highest interests of humanity.”
A person who attended some ten years’ worth of Noble Lectures at Harvard observed that she had only heard the name “Jesus” mentioned once in all that time. This clearly seems in contravention of the donor’s “true intent.” But by ostensibly using the phrase, “the highest interests of humanity,” Harvard has found a loophole to drive not merely a truck through, but an entire fleet of trucks! Over the years the lecture series has promoted a circus of causes that seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with the original intent of the donor. It’s not as if evangelical Christians have disappeared from the planet (although some in power at Harvard might wish that that were the case!), or that none of them have anything valuable to say in our day about Christian missions or “Jesus as ‘the Way, the Truth, and the Life’.” Instead, recent annual Noble Lectures have carried such titles such as, “Considering Hope in a Climate Crisis World” and “The Scandal of Mass Incarceration in the Land of the Free.” The 2024 lecture was given by a Zen Buddhist priest. Something seems seriously amiss here.
Other examples could be cited, such as the Lentz Lectures or the use of Holden Chapel, as well as the use of Phillips Brooks House on the Harvard campus, built in 1901 to honor the Rev. Phillips Brooks (1835–1893). Brooks was a beloved spiritual mentor at Harvard and also the composer of “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” Funds were raised at the time from more than 500 donors. The building was to be used “without distinction of sect or denomination,” for all “forms of spiritual activity, benevolent action, and religious aspiration.” While Christian groups on campus have occasionally been given limited access to the building over the years, it has for the most part been granted only grudgingly. Once again, the donors’ “true intent” seems to have been lost in the process.
Harvard is expert at “re-working” its interpretation of many of these bequests to avoid doing what most reasonable people would think as self-evident, and until now it has been too powerful to have to answer to anyone about it. As I wrote in 2008 in America’s Oldest Corporation, “Questions raised in the 1990s and later over how these bequests were being handled were treated dismissively by the University, which refused to turn over any detailed information after repeated requests from various parties.” A terse response from then President Rudenstine and Harvard’s General Counsel stated: “The detailed information you requested about these and other unnamed accounts would be extremely burdensome to collect and produce and will not be made available to you.”
Now, however, in light of all the attention over Harvard’s antisemitism scandal and the current threat to its tax-exempt status, perhaps that situation may change. Harvard needs to be completely transparent regarding not only how U.S. government funds are spent but also give an accounting for how religion-based bequests have been dealt with in the past and what steps Harvard will take in the future to see how these bequests will be fulfilled according to their donors’ “true intent.”
A. J. Melnick, PhD, has an A.M. degree from Harvard University (1977), and is the founder of EarlyHarvard.com.
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This article was originally published at www.americanthinker.com
