Renew Harvard

We are seeking to join Harvard’s Board of Overseers to restore the University’s status as the world’s leading center of scholarship and education.

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Nominate Our fOUR Candidates before Jan. 31st

Who We Are

We are Harvard alumni seeking to protect the institution we hold dear. We bring leadership and management experience in business, law, and military service.

What We Believe

Harvard’s exceptionality results not from its fame, history, fortune, or influence, but rather its unwavering commitment to seeking truth.

This Veritas ethos, emblazoned on every campus seal, supersedes all other commitments. It is the key to Harvard achieving its mission of educating the members and leaders of our society.  

This mission and the commitment to truth are not self-fulfilling; they require continuous work and reflection to realize their promises. This ongoing commitment has allowed Harvard to educate the nation’s leaders for centuries. But this commitment also demands excellence—of Harvard’s students, faculty, alumni, and leadership. Unfortunately, we also believe that Harvard has lost sight of this core value.  The time has come to recommit to this core principle. 

Claudine Gay’s resignation provides a natural opportunity to correct course. But we must not think that the problems will resolve with one resignation. Harvard’s new leadership must be qualified, prepared, and committed to upholding Harvard’s policies and values for all students and faculty. A selection process that repeats the flaws of the last process will not yield change.

In petitioning to join the Board of Overseers, we bring a diversity of perspectives and opinions. Even among ourselves, we sometimes differ in our views on how the principles we are fighting for apply in different circumstances. That debate is healthy, and we think the ability to have it freely strengthens us. We want Harvard’s students and faculty to forever share and safeguard that same strength.

What we fully agree on is that the fundamental principles laid out below should guide the University and its leadership.  We share a commitment to bringing outside voices to challenge the status quo and restore Harvard’s focus on its key values and mission. While petitioning to join Harvard’s Board of Overseers is humbling and daunting, we believe this outside perspective is necessary to help restore excellence to a University that has long demanded it from us.

What We Will Do

  • Restore leadership excellence to Harvard
  • Uphold free speech and academic standards
  • Protect all our students
  • Remedy operational and endowment mismanagement

Our Ask

If you are a Harvard alumna or alumnus, please nominate all four of our candidates by January 31 to Harvard’s Board of Overseers, at https://vote.escvote.com/harvardpetition. All candidates can be nominated at once. Then please vote in this spring’s election for these same candidates:

Zoe Bedell

Harvard Law School, 2016

Logan Leslie

Harvard and Radcliffe College, 2015

Alec Williams

Harvard Business School, 2017

Julia Pollak

Harvard and Radcliffe College, 2009

Nominate Our four Candidates before Jan. 31st

Join us in recommitting University leadership to excellence by nominating the team below to the Board of Overseers by January 31st , and by voting for them in this spring’s election.

Zoe Bedell

Harvard Law School J.D. 2016

@

Zoe Bedell is an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, where she prosecutes cybercrime. She previously worked at a law firm where her practice focused on complex commercial…

…litigation, as well as privacy and technology issues. Before joining the firm, Zoe clerked for Justice Elena Kagan of the U.S. Supreme Court and for then-Judge Brett
Kavanaugh on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Prior to law school, Zoe worked as a financial analyst at an investment bank, where she specialized in mergers and acquisition advisory work. She also served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, where she
deployed twice to Afghanistan, including serving as Officer-in-Charge of the Marine Corps
Female Engagement Team. Since completing her active duty service, Zoe has advocated for equal opportunities for women in the military, including the successful repeal of the combat exclusion policy that prevented women from serving in combat jobs. She received her B.A. from Princeton University and lives in Virginia.

Logan Leslie

Harvard A.B. 2015, J.D. 2019, M.B.A. 2019

@loganleslie

Logan Leslie is the founder and CEO of Northern Rock, a company that buys, operates, and grows small businesses. With a portfolio of over 50 companies, Northern Rock employs more than 500…

…skilled professionals across the American Southeast.  Logan currently serves as a Special Forces Command Sergeant Major in the Army National Guard.  He has spent over 20 years in the military, with multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.  Logan also serves as an appointee of Governor Brian Kemp on the Georgia State Workforce Development Board, and as a director of the International Academy of Smyrna.  Logan received his A.B. from Harvard College, his J.D. from Harvard Law School, and his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Alec Williams

Harvard Business School M.B.A. 2017

@alecwilliams208

Alec obtained his B.A. in public policy from Princeton University before joining the U.S. Navy. A veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan with 14 years of service, Alec serves as a Lieutenant Commander in…

…the Navy Reserves. While on the G.I. Bill, Alec received his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and his J.D. from Yale Law School. Alec taught statutory interpretation as an adjunct at the University of Idaho’s College of Law, started multiple businesses, and manages investments for funds in real estate, private equity, and venture capital. Alec lives in Boise, Idaho where he was born.

Julia Pollak

Harvard A.B. 2009

@juliaonjobs

Julia Pollak is Chief Economist at ZipRecruiter, a leading online employment marketplace. She leads a team that conducts research on the health of the labor market, identifies hiring trends, and helps employers…

…and job seekers, including graduating students, prepare for the future of work. Her research is frequently cited in leading national outlets, such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. She is co-chair of the Labor Economics Roundtable of the National Association of Business Economics. In 2023, she was named one of the 100 Most Influential Talent Acquisition Thought Leaders by TATech and was awarded the Center for Workforce Inclusion’s Innovation and Thought Leadership award. Prior to working at ZipRecruiter, Julia was an Assistant Policy Analyst at the RAND Corporation and an adjunct economics instructor at Pepperdine University. Julia was a drilling reservist in the U.S. Navy from 2011 to 2022. Julia received her A.B. from Harvard College and her MPhil from Paree RAND Graduate School. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband (also a Harvard alumnus) and their three children.

Nominate Our Candidates

If you are a Harvard alumna or alumnus, please nominate all four of our candidates to Harvard’s Board of Overseers by clicking the button below:

Nominate candidates Here

Petition candidates like us must each receive 3,238 alumni nominations by January 31st. Then please vote in this spring’s election for these same candidates:

Zoe Bedell, Harvard Law School, 2016

Logan Leslie, Harvard and Radcliffe College, 2015

Alec Williams, Harvard Business School, 2017

Julia Pollak, Harvard and Radcliffe College, 2009

Our Platform

Restore leadership excellence to Harvard

Alumni are understandably disheartened by Harvard’s self-portrait this year. The University has
suffered crescendoing scandals and demonstrably poor leadership at the very top. Yet our leadership challenges extend far beyond this.  Those failures…

…are merely symptoms of deeper ailments that are now obvious to us all.  Harvard has forgotten its first responsibility:  to provide the very best education to the very best students, who, with their passion and what they learn on campus, will change the world.  

Action Plan:

  • Courageously defend our Veritas mission
  • Demand academic integrity: from the Corporation to the freshman class
  • Introduce good governance, transparency, and independent oversight
  • Establish and publish criteria for selecting the next President that prioritizes candidates’ competence and aligns to the responsibilities of managing a large, complex enterprise like Harvard

Uphold free speech and academic freedom

Challenging bad ideas with better ones is how Harvard became Harvard.  Allowing the free and open debate of ideas was our University’s lodestar for centuries, only recently abandoned.  Students should be judged on their caliber of mind and…

…quality of effort, not on their agreement with consensus.  This is obvious to us yet appears controversial for some.  With respect to free speech, is a metric in which Harvard should always aspire to rank first, not last, and take all steps needed to realize that goal.  

The University should not take sides in contentious debates, but provide a neutral forum for our students and faculty to do so, allowing them to persuade and be persuaded through reason and research without fear of suppression by administrators nor intimidation by the heckler’s veto.  Bullhorns and barricades have no place in lecture halls and common rooms.  For even nauseating ideas, we think Twain prescribes the better tonic: allow fools to “open [their mouths] and remove all doubt.” The answer to noxious speech is more speech.

Great templates exist already.  State Universities, by law, provide uniform free speech rights to speakers without determining which viewpoints deserve less or more protection.  The University of Chicago takes no official stances on public controversies for fear of chilling campus speech, or in their words, “The University is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.”  This neutrality policy circumvents the minefield Harvard regularly walks, lamenting some tragedies while leaving others unaddressed (and by implication, condoned).  In the wake of its own blunders, the University of Pennsylvania is recommitting itself to an ethos of free discourse and institutional neutrality through its New Constitution.

Action Plan:

  • Integrate a well-defined policy
  • on academic freedom and free speech into the Code of Student Conduct.
  • Proactively cultivate ideological diversity and contrarian thought in the Corporation, administration, faculty, and student body to resist conformity and groupthink
  • Establish and enforce a policy that prohibits the University from taking public positions on social or political issues
  • Allow students to face criticism for thoughtless speech. Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequence

Protect all our students and their genuine diversity

Diversity has always been among Harvard’s greatest strengths,  but administrators have become surprisingly uniform in what they value.  Racial diversity is a paramount goal for any top University.  So too should be diversity in socioeconomic…

…class, ethnicity, religion, viewpoint, geographic origin, nationality, parental status, sexuality, and the myriad other factors that comprise the complex identities of our students and faculty.  Allow one’s identity to be expressed in its exquisite fullness, inside and outside classrooms. But protect our students from bullying, harassment, violence, and threats of violence based on those identities.

Students should not be reduced to their race, gender, religion, or any other single characteristic; nor discriminated against on that basis.

Action Plan:

  • Zero tolerance for violence or threats of violence.  Ideas are not violence. Actual threats, harassment, and bullying are.
  • Protect every expression of identity equally, to include even traditional identities like religion
  • Apply the Code of Conduct uniformly and consistently to foster free expression

Remedy institutional mismanagement

As of Fall 2022, only a quarter of Harvard’s full-time employees directly serve the University’s academic mission, while over 40% (over 7,700 staff) are administrators.  Tuition and fees now total $79,450 for 2023-24 undergraduates: more than double the…

…amount in 2004. Outrageous tuition has only made Harvard’s world-class education less accessible for middle-class students who do not qualify for strong financial aid, but who remain unable to afford tuition.  

Harvard’s $50.7 billion endowment should be a crucial tool in rectifying this problem. But that endowment returned only 2.9% this year—not enough to cover its contribution to Harvard’s operating costs—all during a period in which the S&P 500 grew 19.6%.  An overreliance on illiquid strategies such as private equity conceals returns since the uncertain market values of these highly illiquid assets are masked by irregular reporting across a seemingly “diversified” swarm of subsidiary fund managers. These subsidiary managers pursue similar strategies and to charge hefty fees to do the job our own endowment managers were hired to perform.  The result: incentives are not aligned to performance, and performance has been bad.

An institution reveals its priorities through what it resources.  Put simply, our budget represents our values, and yet Harvard clearly values middle management over education.  Future leaders come from all walks of life. Harvard’s escalating costs and endowment mismanagement prevent it from fulfilling its core mission.  The reluctance to run a lean ship, the inability to provide returns covering operating costs, and the recent implosion of donors’ faith in the University have left students footing the bill.  Students realizing Harvard now offers a worse product at a higher price explains why Early Decision applications fell 17% this year, an applicant pool which generally represents the most talented students. If the endowment achieves long-term market returns, and when the University is managed efficiently and effectively, we see a future in which Harvard provides Universal free tuition while more fully resourcing its academic mission.

Action Plan:

  • Restructure the University’s administrative bloat to lower operating costs and tuition
  • Hold the endowment to market-based performance standards
  • Reverse the mismanagement of donor relations that has cost the University billions
  • Give students “bang for their buck” by grading management on what share of tuition actually goes toward faculty and the educational mission
January Q&A Learn More

Petition candidates like us must each receive 3,238 alumni nominations by January 31st.

Then please vote in this spring’s election for these same candidates:

Zoe Bedell, Harvard Law School, 2016

Logan Leslie, Harvard and Radcliffe College, 2015

Alec Williams, Harvard Business School, 2017

Julia Pollak, Harvard and Radcliffe College, 2009

If you are a Harvard alumna or alumnus, please nominate all four of our candidates to Harvard’s Board of Overseers by clicking the button below:

Learn How to Nominate
Click here to Nominate candidates

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