Harvey Silverglate, a critic of civil liberty policy on college campuses, is running a write-in campaign for Harvard Board of Overseers. Harvard alumni can visit his website to request a nomination form. He'll need 219 signatures to get on the ballot, and presumably many more votes than that to be elected. The election is open, as far as I can tell, to all Harvard alumni. If you happen to be a Harvard alum, by all means click away and email Harvey's research assistant to get your form.
Beyond the details of this single election, I'm curious to know what kinds of things progressive alumni are doing to organize for decision-making power at their alma maters - at Harvard or elsewhere. There are, I would think, many opportunities for progressive alumni to have an important impact on campus - elections like these, opportunities to endow progressive professorships and to support progressive student groups, giving solid progressive student leaders good jobs, and forums to weigh in on major campus initiatives and controversies. Actually, I'm willing to bet there are others I'm not even thinking about.
In any case, there appears to be very little in the way of progressive alumni organizing. There are a variety of progressive alumni networks for campuses including Tufts, Villanova, Cornell, and West Virginia University, to name a few. But many of these are small or fledgling, and some appear to be pretty much inactive. Certainly, there doesn't appear to be a national organization for progressives who would like to keep an eye on campus politics. What can we do to reinvigorate this sector of progressive organizing, to ensure that there is a robust progressive voice within academia as well as within university administration, and to ensure that progressive students and student groups are supported and appropriately mentored? It seems like a pretty interesting nut for some motivated progressives to crack.
