arvard is quietly asking donors for $10 million gifts to establish new endowed professorships in a sweeping bid to reshape its faculty under the banner of “viewpoint diversity,” according to two people familiar with the initiative.

The campaign, driven by Harvard’s top brass, aims to raise several hundred million dollars to support a new cohort of professors. If successful, the funding could bring dozens of faculty members to campus and drastically shift Harvard’s academic makeup.

University officials have pitched the effort to major donors — conservative and liberal alike — as a way to broaden ideological representation across Harvard, two people said. But the fundraising target has repeatedly shifted after pushback from donors who viewed the scale as too ambitious, one person said.

Harvard Provost John F. Manning ’82 — the University’s second-highest administrator and a prominent conservative legal scholar — has led the effort, according to two people. Still, Harvard has carefully framed the project as a general push for “viewpoint diversity,” rather than a politically aligned initiative.

Under a model being proposed, new hires would not be housed in a standalone institute. Instead, they would be appointed at the University level and embedded across schools and departments, per two people.

Manning began privately testing the idea as early as last summer. At a Boston alumni gathering, he told attendees the University hoped to recruit between 20 and 30 faculty connected to the initiative, according to another person familiar.

Since then, Harvard officials have continued to court potential donors through private meetings and dinners nationwide. Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 traveled to Los Angeles in mid-January to meet with top-dollar donors.

A University spokesperson wrote in a statement that Manning and Garber were in “ongoing conversations with a variety of members of the University community about how best to advance” viewpoint diversity on Harvard’s campus.

“Potential approaches continue to evolve through these discussions,” the spokesperson added.

The initiative builds on plans that have been taking shape for more than a year. Last April, Garber committed to “accelerating” efforts to establish a campus-wide viewpoint diversity initiative. That summer, the Wall Street Journal reported that Harvard was sketching plans for a conservative-leaning center modeled on Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

But the approach now emerging marks a clear departure from that idea. Rather than creating a separate hub, Harvard is pursuing a more integrated strategy — placing new faculty directly within existing departments.

The effort comes in response to longstanding criticism that Harvard’s faculty leans overwhelmingly liberal. Those concerns intensified last year, when U.S. President Donald Trump elevated the issue as part of a broader pressure campaign against the University.

In the now-infamous April 2025 letter, federal officials called for an audit of Harvard’s faculty to assess “viewpoint diversity” and demanded it hire a “critical mass” of new professors in departments deemed lacking. Garber rejected the Trump administration’s ultimatum, but the scrutiny has persisted.

The Crimson’s annual Faculty of Arts and Sciences survey has repeatedly found that the majority of Harvard’s faculty identify as liberal; last year, more than 60 percent of respondents did. Faculty also overwhelmingly give money to Democrats — professors contributed nearly $430,000 to left-leaning PACs and candidates in the two years leading up to the 2024 election.

In the same faculty survey, a majority of respondents said they did not want Harvard to make a “concerted effort” to hire more conservative faculty. By contrast, just 23 percent wanted it to be a focus of the University.

Even so, some prominent voices have pushed for change. Government professor and prominent conservative Harvey C. Mansfield penned an op-ed in The Crimson last spring calling on the University to increase the presence of right-leaning scholars.

Harvard’s internal task forces on antisemitism and Islamophobia also recommended last year that the University establish a central hub for “pluralism” on campus. But Harvard has yet to publicly outline formal plans for such a program.

—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at hcc.35. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn.

—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at elisespenner.82. Follow her on X @EliseSpenner.