Software Leader Promises New Gift After Canceling Harvard Pledge

By Maria Di Mento

After reneging on his $115-million pledge to Harvard University, Lawrence J. Ellison, chief executive of the Oracle software company, is planning to make another large charitable commitment soon.

Although Mr. Ellison usually supports medical research, the technology entrepreneur has not said whether the new pledge will support that cause or another one, says his spokesman, Bob Wynne.

Separately, Mr. Ellison recently pledged $100-million to the Ellison Medical Foundation, in Bethesda, Md. The commitment is part of the settlement of an insider-trading lawsuit in which Oracle shareholders accused Mr. Ellison of illegally making $900-million from the sale of shares of company stock shortly before the value of the stock plunged in 2001.

After arguing in court that he did nothing wrong with his shares of Oracle stock, Mr. Ellison agreed to pay legal fees incurred by the shareholders, plus make the $100-million gift over five years.

In the Spotlight

Mr. Ellison’s philanthropy has been under scrutiny because of his decision to withdraw the multimillion-dollar pledge he had made to Harvard.

The university had planned to create the Ellison Institute for World Health to study and measure the effectiveness of global health-care programs with the money Mr. Ellison pledged.

However, last month the university halted plans to hire 155 staff members and scholars for the institute — and laid off three people it hired to manage the institute — because the university had not received money from Mr. Ellison.

A Harvard spokesman said, “We are disappointed with Mr. Ellison’s decision to withdraw his commitment,” but declined to say whether the institution would seek other donors to finance the institute.

Global Health Care

The idea for the institute grew out of a series of conversations between Mr. Ellison and Lawrence H. Summers, the university’s former president, when the two men started talking two years ago about studying the efficiency of global health-care programs, said Mr. Wynne.

Mr. Wynne described the institute as Mr. Summers’s “brainchild,” and said Mr. Summers presented Mr. Ellison with an economic model for how the institute would work. Mr. Ellison told Mr. Summers in 2004 that he would donate $100-million to establish the institute, and then increased that amount to $115-million last year. An official agreement between Mr. Ellison and the university was drafted but never signed.

Mr. Wynne said Mr. Ellison started to reconsider the donation to Harvard around the time Mr. Summers became embroiled in controversy at Harvard. Mr. Summers announced his resignation in February and stepped down from his post on June 30.

Without Mr. Summers’s involvement, Mr. Wynne said, “Larry Ellison felt he could no longer be certain that the money he would be donating would be spent in the way that was discussed.”

Mr. Summers could not be reached for comment.

Naomi Levine, a longtime fund raiser at New York University who is now executive director of the university’s George H. Heyman, Jr. Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising, said that while a donor’s decision to rescind a large pledge may be rare, it is not unheard of. Most donors, she said, are serious about meeting their pledges, but they are not legally bound to do so.

“Whether we like it or not, it is their money, and at any point they can say, ‘No, I don’t want to go forward.’” She added that when a donor decides to back out, it is expected that he or she will pay for any costs that the institution incurred in planning for the project the gift would finance. Neither Harvard officials nor Mr. Ellison’s spokesman would say whether such costs had been paid by Mr. Ellison.