Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are classmates of mine. And in 1996, they both gave enough money to Harvard (Gates gave $15 million, Ballmer $10 million) to build and name a building after their mothers (Mary Maxwell Gates, and Beatrice Dworkin Ballmer).
My experience is a bit different. I have given roughly in the low three figures to my alma mater. I didn’t do life to make money, but I have given Harvard what I could afford. I also talk a lot about my Harvard experience, not to brag, but to enlighten people that yes, there was a Filipino American there in the early 1970s not affiliated with the Marcos dictatorship.
In fact, I appreciate the scholarship I received that enabled me to be one of the first generations among people of color to break the exclusionary wall that Harvard hid behind for most of its nearly 400-year history.
Emil Guillermo
When I was there, I was in dorm crew. Maybe they can name a broom closet after me. I bring up this sensitive topic because last week Harvard released its initial report on a denaming policy for buildings on campus.
This has become a thing in higher ed now that schools are being reminded by their current residents (today’s young woke and diverse students) that schools have yet to deal with the fact they have taken money and named buildings after some real bastards. Or merely racists who were acceptable in their day, like the former President Woodrow Wilson at Princeton.
Even public schools like the “liberal” U.C. Berkeley have seen a number of their buildings up for renaming, including one named for a former university president, David Prescott Barrows.
