Harvard Tried to Win a Huge Gift by Never Mentioning Money

The table was tucked in a dark corner of an expensive, quiet restaurant in Manhattan. Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist and linguist, had taken the train down from Cambridge and joined the president of Harvard, and the two men sat waiting for their dinner companion, a very wealthy donor.

The president had briefed Pinker on the plan. Pinker said they "would see how the conversation proceeded," establish a warm rapport, and create a mood of conviviality and intimacy. Above all, Pinker said, they would not bring up the reason they were there, which was to solicit a very large donation to Harvard.

As Pinker looked around the romantic room, the evening reminded him of something. It felt like being single again and out on a hot date, where both parties know what the night is ultimately about but it would be gauche to blurt it out.

For Pinker, that tension explained this dinner. The donor was described in the careful language of fundraising as a high net worth individual, a phrase Pinker translated as "filthy rich," and the money sought was called a gift. Pinker himself was there as what he called "brain candy," the entertainment. Many wealthy founders of tech companies are smart and curious, he said, and miss the banter and intellectual exchange of university life, so an evening trading ideas can offer something money cannot buy.

To say the quiet part aloud would have ruined it. If the president had said, hey, give us $150 million and we will name the program after you and let you talk to professors whenever you want, it would have put a pall over the evening. Pinker said voicing the unspoken ask would be like asking on a date, "Okay, so are we gonna have sex at the end of this or not?" Both sides know, and know the other knows, but stating it turns a shared understanding into a transaction.

So money never came up. The conversation ranged across the Human Genome Project, brain development, economics, and issues facing the university, while the financial part was left for later, for what Pinker called the "my people will call your people" stage. The point, he said, was to make it feel like friendship, not a sale. A great deal of emotional effort, he said, goes into hiding the exchange, because the largest gifts tend to come when they feel layered on top of friendship rather than priced like a purchase.

There was still a delicate timing problem. At some point the donor had to understand this was not just a pleasant chat, without being asked too bluntly or too soon. Psychologists call that reading of another mind theory of mind, and getting it wrong can let the moment slip.

In this case, the evening did not quite land. Pinker joked that perhaps he was not charming enough. A donation came through, but not as large as Harvard had hoped, and the donor passed on having a Harvard entity named for him in favor of putting his own name on his own buildings.