Word: gifts
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...library in the new building will be named the Charles Engelhart Public Affairs Library, in recognition of a gift of one million dollars from the Charles Engelhard Foundation." --JFK School of Government Spring 1978 Bulletin...
KENNEDY School officials approached the Engelhards with its gift application last year after Charles' daughter, Sophie Engelhard, a 1977 Kennedy School graduate, suggested the family foundation as a possible source of funding. Kennedy School Associate Dean Ira Jackson, the Kennedy School classmate of Sophie who drafted the gift proposal, said his knowledge of Engelhard business operations at that time "was virtually nil, and still is. There was no research or probing, no background effort was made to study Engelhard's corporate activity," he said. "There never is when we're approaching a legitimate foundation that has made large gifts before...
With all this understood, there is no doubt a large element of moral catharsis involved in an exposition of Engelhard's misdeeds. Nevertheless, the question -- now clearly moot -- must be asked: Should Harvard have accepted this gift...
Some may argue that very little of the clean stuff circulates among the foundations that offer such gifts, so to start singling out the gifts of some as unnacceptable is hypocritical. A Kennedy School official, attempting to explain his approach to gifts such as the Engelhard million, said he found some validity in the argument President Lowell used to make, that "to reject one gift on moral grounds would be to certify the moral validity and rectitude of past gifts." This argument seems as much an abdication of social responsibility as Engelhard's explanation of why he chose...
...argument that universities should always accept "no strings attached money" no matter how objectionable the source is a fairly forceful one. But here the standard definition of "no strings attached money" is in need of revision. A gift must not only have no conditions placed on its use; it must also be agreed that the source of the gift remain anonymous. Harvard, by allowing the Charles Engelhard Foundation to be publicly associated with the new facility legitimizes, however subtly, Engelhard's business practices...