Pritzker Hall Still Nearly $40 Million Short of Fundraising Goal as Construction Continues

Fundraising for Pritzker Hall — the under-construction home of Harvard’s Economics department — remains nearly $40 million short of its original target, according to an internal Alumni Affairs & Development presentation obtained by The Crimson.

As of Dec. 31, 2025, the project had raised a little more than $138 million of its $175 million goal — leaving a gap of roughly $37 million with construction already underway. The slide deck also revealed that Pritzker Hall had not received any new funding during the 2026 fiscal year.

Construction on Pritzker Hall began in June 2025 and is expected to conclude in December 2027. Located between the Littauer Center for Public Administration and Austin Hall, the building will replace Littauer as the department’s primary home.

College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo said that the project is still on track for its original construction timeline and budget, but declined to comment on how the remaining fundraising gap would be closed or if additional funding has been secured.

The project’s largest backer is Penny S. Pritzker ’81, senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation — the University’s highest governing body — whose $100 million donation in 2021 set the effort in motion. The building bears her name.

In January 2025, shortly before construction broke ground, three brothers from the Tsai family — Joseph T. Tsai ’98, Jeffery T. Tsai ’01, and Jason T. Tsai ’05 — financed an event and teaching space inside the hall to be named after their father, Hong-Tu Tsai.

The University simultaneously announced two new endowed professorships for the department in January 2025. A gift from Alexander Slusky ’89 and his wife, Danna Slusky, will fund a chair for a scholar studying real-world applications of economics, while a donation from Donald M. Smith ’66 will endow a professorship focused on climate change, natural resources, or energy economics.

Though Pritzker Hall remains tens of millions short of its target, fundraising across the FAS has accelerated. Donations to the school surged to $222 million in the second half of 2025, positioning the FAS for a historically strong fundraising year — though administrators said last fall that the school is facing a $365 million structural deficit. More than 60 percent of the FAS’s annual revenue is drawn from donations.

The Office of Physical Resources and Planning is overseeing the construction of Pritzker Hall, serving as an intermediary between the department and outside vendors. Contractors including S&F Concrete Inc. and WL French Excavating have carried out significant work on the project to date.

The building’s opening comes as demand for Economics instruction at Harvard shows no signs of slowing. Economics was the most popular concentration among the Class of 2025, according to The Crimson’s senior survey, with 16 percent of surveyed seniors declaring it as their field of study. A separate Crimson review found that nearly one in three non-freshman student-athletes currently concentrate in Economics.

—Staff writer Samuel S. Rudavsky can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @samrudavsky.