For three years, a handful of Har-vard University alumni have waged a quiet effort to persuade the university to expand its mission far beyond its Cambridge campus, the students it e-ducates there and the multitude of research labs, libraries and other facil-ities available to them. They call themselves Harvard Alumni for Social Action, or HASA, and their goal is to prod the university to use its vast wealth, including its $35 billion en-dowment, in unprecedented ways, like supporting struggling colleges in Africa.

有三年之久，少數哈佛大學校友悄悄發起一項計畫，想說服哈佛大學擴大其使命到劍橋校園之外，包括曾在那裡接受教育的學生及大量研究實驗室、圖書館和其他他們可以使用的設備。他們自稱「哈佛社會行動校友」，他們的目標是促使校方運用其龐大的財富資源，包括350億美元的捐款，以前所未有的方式贊助非洲苦苦掙扎的大學。

"There are large amounts of money being given to Harvard and other wealthy universities every year by classes like ours, and they don't really need it," said Jennifer Freeman, part of the HASA outreach committee for the Class of 1983. "They should be thinking of new things they could do with it, which would re-energize alumni and be good for the university, too."

「哈佛社會行動校友」1983年班推廣委員會成員之一珍妮佛．佛利曼說：「哈佛和其他有錢的大學，每年獲得像我們這種班級的大筆捐贈，這些學校並不真的需要這些錢，他們應該設法想出些新招來使用捐款，這樣既能重燃校友熱情，也有益於大學。」

Both Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard's president, and her predecessor, Lawrence H. Summers, have been unwilling to even discuss the propos-als. The development office, as fund-raising operations are known in the charitable world, politely refuses to share its list of alumni, frustrating HASA's recruiting ability.

哈佛前任校長桑莫斯和現任校長佛斯特甚至連討論這個提議都興趣缺缺。募款是慈善界為人所知的工作，但推展辦公室婉拒提供校友名單，重挫「哈佛社會行動校友」招攬新人才的能力。

Tamara Rogers, vice president for university development at Harvard and herself a member of the Class of 1981, said university policy, in an ef-fort to protect privacy, prohibited distribution of alumni lists. "It is sim-ply not our mission to provide direct financial support to universities else-where in the world," Ms. Rogers said. "It is part of the mission to build ca-pacity in universities throughout the world through our research and edu-cation."

哈佛副校長搭瑪拉．羅傑斯也是1981這屆推廣成員之一。她說，為了保護個人隱私，校方的政策是禁止分送校友名單：「直接提供金援給哈佛之外的世界，根本就不是我們的任務。我們的任務是透過研究與教育，在全球建立哈佛的能量。」

HASA reflects the growing debate over university endowments and whether their continued accumulation of assets — Harvard is expected to have $100 billion at the end of the next 10 years — serves a charitable purpose.

「哈佛社會行動校友」的成立，反映出為了大學捐贈及資產持續擴大是否符合慈善目的，已展開辯論並日益升溫。哈佛的資產在未來10年預期可達一千億美元。

"This is a healthy discussion for u-niversities and donors to have," said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Repub-lican of Iowa, who has been urging wealthy universities to spend more of their endowments to combat rising tuition costs.

愛荷華選出的共和黨參議員格萊斯利說：「這是大學與捐款者一次健康的討論。」他一向主張有錢的大學將捐款用來對抗日益高漲的學費。

HASA was started by Paula Tavrow, a professor at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, after she started getting calls from Harvard in 2005 soliciting a gift in honor of her 25th reunion the next year.

「哈佛社會行動校友」由加州大學洛杉磯分校公共衛生學院教授波拉．塔佛洛發起。2005年她開始接到數通哈佛大學的電話，請她捐獻贊助次年舉行的第25屆同學會。

Ms. Tavrow got a firsthand look at the plight of African universities when she worked at the University of Malawi in the early 1990s. At that time, a drought meant the university had no water. The library had no working photocopier, and a professor was lending students his own books because otherwise they could not do the required reading.

塔佛洛女士1990年代初期在馬拉威大學工作期間，第一手目睹見證了非洲大學的困境。當時乾旱即意味大學無水可用。圖書館沒有影印機，一位教授把自己的書借給幾位學生，要不然這些學生就無法完成規定要讀的書。

Ms. Tavrow began contacting classmates, and they began trying to persuade the class gift officers, the alumni designated as fund-raisers for each class, to embrace the notion of redirecting reunion contributions to Africa. That idea was rejected by the gift officers and the university, as were other suggestions from the group that was gradually coalescing into HASA.

塔佛洛開始接洽幾位同班同學，他們試著說服該班的禮物官，也就是校友會替每班指定的募款人，希望他能接受把同學會的捐贈轉用於非洲這個想法。禮物官與校方都拒絕此一想法，也排斥這群人的其他建言，最後這些人逐漸聯合組成「哈佛社會行動校友」。

The university finally agreed to create a fund to underwrite fellow-ships for African graduate students seeking to study at the School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, but only af-ter Marco Elser, a 1981 graduate, a-greed to pledge $250,000 over three years to get it started.

哈佛最後同意成立一個基金，提供獎學金給有意前往哈佛文理學院就讀的非洲研究生；但這是在厄索同意於3年內捐出25萬美元發動此基金才同意。厄索是哈佛1981年的研究生。

His initial goal was to increase the number of alumni from the Class of 1981 contributing to the reunion gift, and in fact the class broke the record for 25th-reunion fund-raising and participation, attracting $41 million from 75.8 percent of the class, Ms. Rogers said. About $300,000 went to the fellowships.

厄索原先的目標是增加1981年這班捐贈禮物給同學會的校友人數，而在實際上，這班在第25屆同學會打破了過去募款金額與參加人數，共捐出4100萬美元，並有75.8%的同學參加。羅傑斯說，約30萬美元用於提供獎助金。

HASA members say that result alone is a good reason for Harvard to embrace them.

「哈佛社會行動校友」幾位會員表示，此一結果給了哈佛校方擁抱他們的大好理由。

Ms. Rogers said the university al-ready touched Africa and the rest of the world in myriad ways. All told, a spokesman said, Harvard has 68 cen-ters and programs with work related to Africa and offers 125 classes about the continent.

羅傑斯說，哈佛已經以各種方式接洽非洲與全球。一位發言人說，全部加起來，哈佛有68個研究中心與專案與非洲有關，並開設125個有關非洲大陸的課程。

《詞解》
alumni 校友
endowment 捐款
outreach committee 推廣委員會
politely refuse 婉拒
recruiting 招攬新成員
charitable purpose 慈善目的
plight 困境
underwrite fellowships 提供獎學金
HASA 哈佛社會行動校友