Lesin said that his candidacy aims to restore excellence to a university that he believes has lost its way. He accused the previous administration of failing to respond to the rise of anti-Semitism on campus during the war between Israel and Gaza.
During Friday's event, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, steered clear of hot-button topics like race and the ouster of Claudine Guy, Harvard's first black president, earlier this month. But their presence at an event supporting a candidate who has criticized Jay and Harvard's handling of speech issues on campus shows how wealthy donors are increasingly willing to use their influence to shape the school. Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, a Harvard donor who led the campaign to oust Jay, has proposed his own slate of candidates for the Board of Supervisors.
“Harvard has a unique ability to shape the entire field of higher education, which is clearly important for training entire generations of people,” Zuckerberg said. “Sam is the kind of person I would want to share in the leadership of Harvard.”
Lesin, Ackman and others are part of a group of business leaders who say they are concerned about the politicization of campus life, diversity initiatives they say have gone too far, and what they call a double standard around free speech — claiming anti-Semitic speech has not been condemned strongly enough. , especially compared to the school's response to other events e.g Like the killing of George Floyd. These concerns, coupled with allegations of plagiarism, led to Jay's ouster after only a few months in office.
Amid campus tensions that arose amid the war between Israel and Gaza, some students, alumni, donors and others — including Lessin — thought her responses were too late and too half-hearted.
The situation worsened in December when a US House of Representatives committee questioned Jay, along with the presidents of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, about anti-Semitism on their campuses. In tense exchanges with lawmakers. Jay and the other presidents repeatedly refused to say that calling for the genocide of Jews on campus would violate school policies.
Gay's answers were considered insensitive and tone-deaf by many, and although she later apologized, political leaders, major donors and others called for her resignation.
Allegations of plagiarism in her academic work surfaced and were amplified by her critics, and in early January, she resigned.
School Dean and Chief Academic Officer Alan M. Garber has been named interim president.
Some alumni, politicians and others also posted scathing comments on social media about Harvard's highly opaque institution — the university's most powerful governing board, officially called the President and Fellows of Harvard College — its selection of gay people and its handling of recent events. Disagreements. Some have called for the resignation of Penny Pritzker, a senior associate at the firm. Some alumni have launched campaigns for a seat on another university's governing body, the Board of Supervisors.
Ackman also supports his own slate of candidates for the Board of Supervisors.
Lessin aims to have 3,300 written nominations from Harvard alumni for the 2024 Spring Oversights ballot by January 31.
