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Manila Bulletin devider Technews devider Harvard University and Meta: donor overreach?

Harvard University and Meta: donor overreach?

Published Dec 19, 2023 02:30 am

I was surprised to read the news about Harvard University firing one of the prominent disinformation researcher, Joan Donovan. Dr. Donovan was one of the first researchers to access the internal documents, also known as Facebook Papers, leaked by Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee. In an ideal situation, this is a win for the researcher and the university to be at the forefront of disinformation research. However, Dr. Donovan alleges that because Meta is a huge donor, she and her research team were silenced and eventually fired, to appease Meta. This does not look good for such a prestigious university as Harvard, right?

Around twenty (20) years ago, the University of the Philippines (UP), had a major donation from then Sun Microsystems with Ayala Foundation and Mirant Foundation as partners. The donation established the UP Java Research and Development Center (UP JRDC) and the Java Competency Center (UP JCC), as part of Sun Microsystems' ASEAN Java program. Along with this, Sun Microsystems donated thousands of copies of StarOffice, an open source office productivity suite. Sun Microsystems never influenced the Department of Computer Science, College of Engineering, or UP, on which equipment to purchase, or what research topics can and cannot be pursued. There was clearly no overreach by the donor. Note that Ayala Foundation and Mirant Foundation never did as well. Sadly, Sun Microsystems is no longer in existence. 

Along the same time as UP JCC and UP JRDC were running, Microsoft also donated and setup a similar research center. And no, Microsoft had no strings attached, too, like Sun Microsystems.

Today, there are hundreds of technology companies that donate to colleges and universities all over the world. In my experience in the University of the Philippines, the donors never flexed their muscles to attach strings (or worse a noose?) to influence, derail, restrict or limit, UP's academic freedom. I hope that whatever is happening to Harvard University right now, with the allegations of favoring Meta's donations over academic freedom, will not happen to UP, which may be worse since it is a public university.

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