Correction appended
In a stark parallel to recent trends on Dartmouth's Board of Trustees, candidates nominated by petition are on the ballot for Harvard University's Board of Overseers for the first time since 1999. Harvard alumni Harvey Silverglate and Robert Freedman are running on an "informal" ticket in an effort to reform Harvard's disciplinary system and improve the university's academic rigor. Silvergate, in an interview with The Dartmouth, said he was inspired to run, in part, by Dartmouth Trustee T.J. Rodgers '70, who was elected as a petition candidate in 2004.
The Board of Overseers is one of Harvard's two governing boards and is considered more consultative than the other board, the President and Fellows of Harvard College -- also known as the Harvard Corporation.
The Harvard Alumni Association has selected eight candidates to vie for the six open positions on the board -- the more traditional form of nomination.
The last petition candidate to win election to the Board of Overseers was Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1989. Tutu, who has an honorary doctor of laws degree from Harvard University, is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights activist from South Africa.
President Barack Obama, who attended Harvard Law School, was defeated in his 1991 petition bid for a position on the board.
Freedman, in an interview with The Dartmouth, said he decided to ask fellow Harvard alumnus Silverglate to be his ally as a petition candidate to strengthen his voice on the board, and because he said they have similar ideas about Harvard governance.
"If I was just elected as one person on a 30 person board, I would be a lot less effective," Freedman said.
Silverglate, a civil liberties attorney who said he opposes "unfairness" and "irrationality" in higher education, said he decided to run to abolish any "speech codes" at Harvard.
"[The members of the Harvard Administrative Board] have stubbornly clung to their medieval system where rationality does not apply," Silverglate said, referencing Harvard's student disciplinary system.
Silverglate is the founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, an organization that seeks "to defend and sustain individual rights at America's colleges and universities," according to its web site. The organization has been critical of Dartmouth in the past and has been a significant supporter of recent petition candidates.
Although Harvard alumni are allowed to vote for up to six candidates, Freedman said he has asked alumni to vote for his ticket alone.
"When you just vote for us, it's called bullet voting, and it gives us a better chance of winning," Freedman said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
Both Silverglate and Freedman said that they are at a disadvantage in the election because they do not have access to the university's database of alumni e-mail addresses, as Association-nominated candidates do. This issue has also proven controversial in past trustee elections at Dartmouth.
Silverglate was critical of an e-mail sent by Board of Overseers President Roger Ferguson to alumni "[urging them] to participate" in the Board elections. The e-mail cited the "remarkable mix of candor and collegiality" on the Board currently.
This reference reflects a "thinly veiled" attempt at neutrality, Silverglate said.
"Collegiality is a code word meaning, 'In order to get along, you go along,'" Silverglate said. "You don't rock the boat."
Ferguson has maintained that he had sent the letter to convince alumni to vote, not as a campaign tool.
"The letter was sent out to encourage all Harvard alumni to vote," John Longbrake, senior director of communications at Harvard, said.
If his campaign fails, Silverglate said he will run again.
"If I don't win this year, next year we are going to try to get some money together and compile a database of all living alumni," Silverglate said.
Freedman said he has not yet considered whether he will run again if defeated.
Ballots for the election were mailed in April and must be returned by May 29. Results will be announced June 4.
The original version of this article incorrectly stated that Archbishop Desmond Tutu had an honorary law degree from Harvard Law School. In fact, Tutu has an honorary doctor of laws degree from Harvard University.
