Mark Zuckerberg has kept relatively mum about antisemitism at Harvard — but he’s expected to interrupt his silence on Friday as he endorses a Silicon Valley mogul to hitch a strong panel that supervises the embattled Ivy League university, On The Money has learned.
Sam Lessin — a tech investor and former Facebook worker who also happens to be married to The Information founder Jessica Lessin — is pushing for a spot on Harvard’s Board of Overseers, a bunch of roughly 30 which is speculated to regulate the Harvard Corporation and the university’s president.
On Friday, Lessin is slated to talk on a Zoom call at 6:30 p.m. ET with Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan in regards to the way forward for Harvard and why the Facebook founder is supporting Lessin’s bid.
This will likely be the primary time Zuckerberg, who’s Jewish, has publicly discussed Harvard and the longer term of the college for the reason that attacks on Israel.
“Antisemitism at Harvard is amazingly disappointing and an enormous problem,” Lessin told On The Money. “It must be solved nevertheless it’s also the canary within the coal mine when it comes to a free speech problem.”
After the Oct. 7 attacks, Lessin said he called Harvard “and said I wouldn’t be donating anymore until governance and administration improved and the campus was clearly putting academics first.”
“Most of my friends who did the identical left it at that, but I don’t think that’s enough,” Lessin added.
Lessin has already notched endorsements from Thrive Capital founder Josh Kushner, former Oscar Health CEO Mario Schlosser and former Zappos COO Alfred Lin in addition to executives from General Catalyst, Sequoia, Y Combinator, Bessemer, and Tiger Global.
Harvard’s Board of Overseers has recently develop into a focus of Pershing Square founder Bill Ackman, who’s nominating his own slate of candidates after leading a campaign against Claudine Gay, who resigned earlier this month.
The Board of Overseers is the college’s second-highest authority after the Harvard Corporation, with “the ability of consent to certain actions corresponding to the election of Corporation members” — they will likely be chargeable for approving or rejecting the college’s next president. Board members hold seats for six years.
While the 4 candidates Ackman is pushing are all war veterans and under 40, they don’t have an understanding of the tech world, Lessin told On The Money.
The truth is, almost nobody involved in Harvard leadership seems to have a background in tech, he adds. That is at a time when artificial intelligence and social media have never been more essential — and majors like computer science and applied mathematics have never been more popular.
Not less than five members of the Board are leaving this yr — but under an arcane rule, only two recent appointees might be write-in candidates.
The opposite three may have to be nominated by Harvard’s alumni association.
The group might be bureaucratic, making it difficult to get recent blood onto the board.
The voting platform also might be glitchy, Lessin notes.
On Friday, Lessin and other write-in candidates expect to be told by Harvard officials what number of votes — out of the three,238 needed to get on the ballot — they’ve received before the Jan. 31 nomination deadline.
“My email inbox is full of tons of of people that can’t work out arrange accounts,” Lessin said.
It’s unclear why Silicon Valley is so under-represented in Harvard leadership. A part of this has to do with Bay Area’s approach to business, “Silicon Valley is all about constructing recent stuff — they discount brand equity,” Lessin adds.
“In tech, I feel rather a lot about platforms — we’d like trusted institutions like Harvard,” he adds.
Lessin also notes that Harvard’s alumni are more “decentralized” than those on the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School, a bunch of financiers mostly based in Recent York who successfully ousted Liz Magill as president.
After all, not less than a handful of notable Harvard alums — like Zuckerberg and Bill Gates — never actually finished their degrees.
Reps for Harvard and Zuckerberg didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment.
