“1636 Forum informs me on Harvard issues that are important to me: academic excellence, free speech, and student safety. We need to get to the truth (Veritas). Everything else is noise.”
–Alfred Lin (AB ‘94), Partner at Sequoia Capital

“1636 Forum is like a good friend expecting the best of their friend. Harvard has gone astray and the 1636 Forum is keeping a close watch on the university, asking Harvard to remember what made us cherish it in the first place.”
–Eric Newcomer (AB ‘12), journalist

About 1636 Forum

 
• Beliefs and Mission
• Approach
• How We Got Here
• Who We Are
• Get Involved
• How to Give Effectively to Harvard

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Beliefs and Mission

There is a sizable and caring but largely silent majority that has looked on with dismay at the erosion of Harvard’s mission, governance, and campus culture over the last several years. For many, the fall of 2023 made several passive concerns very tangible and very practical - and put a fine point on how far the University has drifted from its core academic mission and historical standing.

Many (most?) believe that Harvard’s existing structures are too entrenched to change, that the governance is too broken to fix, and that the answer is simply to walk away from the University and spend effort elsewhere. We disagree.  We are optimists, and we believe that with the right community building and application of effort, we can help Harvard back and make it even stronger for the next century.

Harvard Needs To...

• 1. Refocus on its mission of academic excellence
• 2. Re-establish a true academic free speech culture on campus in service of academic excellence
• 3. Guarantee student safety on campus in service of academic excellence
• 4. Fix its core governance issues

Approach

We will not accomplish all of this overnight, but the reality is that the issues facing Harvard (and higher education more broadly) are acute enough that we cannot accept tectonic timelines for change.  We need to operate on a timescale of months, not years or decades.  With that in mind, here is the plan...

1. Build a Broad Community of Supportive Alums Across All Schools of Harvard
One of the great parts of Harvard University is that it is an extremely diverse community.  Harvard alums are everywhere.  They are in every country, every industry, and every community.  This diversity is great, but it can make it difficult when trying to create changes that require scale and focus.  We know that a broad swath of alumni agree with the simple principles we support, and we hope that in addition to their local Harvard ‘communities’ in different cities, industries, and cultural communities, the 1636 Forum can be a place of broad alignment and collaboration for change.

2. Coordinate Knowledge Sharing and Action Across the Community
Harvard alumni tend to be very busy and tend to be very involved in many different issues.  A very small percentage care about the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA), read high-gloss magazines, or are going to dedicate hours every week to helping the University. Few folks tend to have the time or effort to focus on arcane processes and rules that govern the university. Through the 1636 Forum, we will provide simple access to trusted sources on what is happening on campus and a platform for coordinating action to help the University.

3. Create Accountability and Actionable Feedback
This isn’t the type of group that is going to hold marches in Harvard Yard or sit-ins at University Hall… But the reality is that administrators and governors, like anyone else, respond to feedback and incentives.  This group will seek to make sure that the decisions and policies that individual leaders and groups are making on campus are widely known. In shining a light on what leaders are doing in a supportive and clear way and offering feedback from alumni who want to positively contribute to Harvard’s success, we are confident we can help people on campus make better decisions. 

4. Support Aligned Administrative, Governance, and Faculty Voices
For all of the challenges on campus, there are also many wonderful professors and administrators trying to help Harvard move in the right direction. Some feel free and are confident to speak publicly; others do not. Some are well funded; some are very much not. We will support aligned administrative, governance, and faculty voices in the hard work ahead.

5. Remain Apolitical and Narrowly Focused
One critical factor in having an impact here is staying politically neutral and very narrowly focused on academic excellence, governance, and the key aspects of campus culture that directly flow from those key inputs. This isn’t about ‘left’ vs. ‘right’, and we want to stay as far away from those that want to politicize these issues as possible. The goal is to help Harvard, and by extension the institution of classically liberal higher education, reestablish and maintain its position as a trusted institution pursuing truth outside of the political sphere.

Who We Are

This initiative has evolved out of Sam Lessin’s campaign for the Harvard Board of Overseers in December of 2023. In the context of this campaign, it became clear that many Harvard alums were not being heard by University leadership and that there was more work to do beyond simply one write-in campaign for the Overseers board. For now, the 1636 Forum is being run by the folks who worked on Sam's campaign, but we hope to dramatically expand in the coming weeks and months.

How to Get Involved

Please reach out if you want to help. There are many volunteer opportunities (and a handful of paid roles, especially for students) as we get this off the ground. What we are looking for includes:

• Help us edit our weekly newsletter (paid student opportunity)
• Help organize local in-person meetings, especially in major cities like NYC, BOS, TLV, SF, LA, CHI
• Help with virtual programming, putting together Zoom events with relevant thinkers and leaders
• Help us vet grant requests from organizations looking to make a difference on the ground at Harvard
• Help us with research, doing background research on Harvard (paid student opportunity)
• Other ideas? Please reach out if you have other ideas for how to help!