Lessin said his candidacy is about restoring excellence to a university that he said has lost its way. He accused the previous administration of failing to respond to rising anti-Semitism on campus during the Israel-Gaza war.

During Friday’s event, Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan stayed away from current topics such as race and the ouster of Claudine Gay, Harvard’s first black president, earlier this month. But her presence at an event supporting a candidate who criticized Gay and Harvard’s handling of speech issues on campus shows how wealthy donors are increasingly willing to use their influence to shape the school. Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, a Harvard donor who pushed for Gay’s removal, has proposed his own slate of candidates for the Board of Overseers.

“Harvard has a unique ability to shape the entire field of higher education, which is obviously important for educating entire generations of people,” Zuckerberg said. “Sam is the type of person I would like to have leading Harvard.”

Lessin, Ackman and others are among a cohort of business leaders who say they are concerned about the politicization of campus life, diversity initiatives that they say have gone too far and what they call double standards on free speech – and claim that it was anti-Semitic The speech was not condemned strongly enough, especially compared to the school’s response to other events such as: like the murder of George Floyd. These concerns, as well as allegations of plagiarism, led to Gay being removed from office after just a few months in office.

Given the tensions on campus that have arisen in the wake of the Israel-Gaza war, some students, alumni, donors and others – including Lessin – felt their responses were too late and too tepid.

The situation worsened in December when a U.S. House committee criticized Gay, along with the presidents of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, for anti-Semitism on their campuses. In intensive exchange with the legislator Gay and the other presidents repeatedly declined to say that calling for genocide against Jews on campus would violate school policy.

Gay’s responses were perceived by many as callous and tone-deaf, and although she later apologized, political leaders, major donors and others called for her resignation.

Accusations of plagiarism in her academic work emerged and were amplified by her critics, and she resigned in early January.

The school’s principal and chief academic officer, Alan M. Garber, has been named interim president.

Some alumni, politicians and others have also made scathing remarks on social media about the highly opaque Harvard Corporation – the university’s most powerful board of directors, which officially appoints Harvard College’s president and fellows – its selection of gays and its treatment of the posted recently Controversies. Some called for the resignation of the company’s senior executive, Penny Pritzker. And some alumni began campaigns for a seat on another of the university’s governing bodies, the Board of Overseers.

Ackman also supports his own slate of candidates for the board.

Lessin aims to receive 3,300 written nominations from Harvard alumni for the 2024 Spring Overseers election by Jan. 31.