The rise of effective altruism (EA) at universities like Harvard has been meteoric. It has also been engineered.
At Harvard, national effective altruist organizations have spent massive amounts of money to repurpose Harvard into an ideological conversion institute for future effective altruists. Using Harvard as a model, they have created a blueprint for the national university system to bring young students to EA and give members of their ideological sect preferential job opportunities, including in government AI watchdogs. This is an unacceptable undermining of American universities and, more broadly, the world’s AI safety institutions.
Effective altruism is a way of life which holds that we are morally obligated to save the most lives possible. As a result, EA tells believers to donate much of their income to the charities impacting the most people. Practically, this usually means supporting charities that work to prevent low-probability, world-ending events such as nuclear war, catastrophic warming, or, nowadays, a hypothetical AI takeover.
However, ethical theory is not at issue here. What is more important is the sustained propaganda campaign that effective altruists have employed against America’s universities. Through teaching institutions and activist organizations, effective altruists have built a system designed to indoctrinate.
Harvard has been central to this story. The Harvard Undergraduate Effective Altruism organization (HUEA), the earliest effective altruist student group founded in America, is EA’s marquee campus club. Indeed, the Center for Effective Altruism (CEA), one of the largest effective altruist nonprofits in the world, has declared it the most effective student organization in the world, weighted to the University population. Many of HUEA’s graduates have become influential EAs: executives at national EA nonprofits; officials at government-run AI safety organizations; and founders of prominent initiatives like The Midas Project, an AI-critical watchdog which OpenAI has accused of being a covert front for Elon Musk.
EA groups hope to replicate their “success” at Harvard nationwide, to start an EA group in every American university and convert the masses to the good word of effective altruism.
But what is this success? What has been so unique about Harvard, and how have so many Harvard students been convinced so quickly of a fringe philosophical sect? The reason is simple: international EA groups committed resources to converting it by whatever means necessary. By pouring money into radicalizing students via underhanded means, EA groups have created a proof of concept that they plan to take national. There are two parts to this strategy — first, paid activists changing Harvard’s curricula, and second, ideologically motivated job opportunities that shift the publicly stated, if not privately believed, attitudes of Harvard students.
The first element of EA’s success at Harvard is its paid-for activists. Offering competitive wages and benefits, organizations like the CEA pay young recent graduates to be “Campus Organizers.” As campus organizers, these pretend-students attend classes (without paying), talk to students (pretending to be fellow undergraduates), and “creat[e] EAs” (their term for converting students). In its slightly creepy listing, the CEA advertises that this job will be perfect for adults with an “intuitive grasp of how to build rapport with” 18-year-olds, using the “framings of EA, longtermism, or animal welfare [that] might draw the most people” to the ideology. Note that the organization is not demanding truth from its organizers but efficiency.1
Perhaps the worst part of these programs is not the faux students themselves but what they do to the campus. Activists are instructed not only to try to convince students of EA, but also to influence the university’s institutions. They are instructed to advocate for university-run pre-orientation programs that can convince students of EA before they even set foot on campus. These faux students are ordered to find “professors…friendly to EA” and to “help” those professors hijack “popular courses” with “EA-aligned content.” Finally, organizers are expected to astroturf student organizations, acting as non-student organizers for supposedly student-run groups. In fact, one of the stated successes of this program is its ability to found new “student-run” EA groups at schools.
Two founders of the Network for EA Support and Training, an organization involved in paid EA organizing at universities, are direct “advisors” to the HUEA, one of whom is also affiliated with the CEA as a “university advisor.”
These advisors, by their own admission, are paid to “intensively mentor” HUEA as “full-time community builders” to “mentor and support groups” through “logistical work…giving talks, [and] hosting events.” These “community builders” are paid six-figure salaries to run student organizations that are supposedly run by students.2 One wonders whether organizations like Harvard’s Undergraduate Effective Altruism are even run by undergraduates at all.
When reached for comment, Sarah Bluhm, Co-President of NEST and former university advisor for The Centre for Effective Altruism, said that NEST only plays a role in “provid[ing] advice and resources to student groups,” while student leaders “choose their own officers, programming, and positions.” She further said that “attending classes is not part of any NEST role.”
Co-President of NEST Matt Reardon, on the other hand, said to the Salient that NEST’s paid activists play a wider role, including “arrang[ing] guest speakers, set[ting] up food logistics and invitations around social events, or meet[ing]with interested students one-on-one to try to make good reading recommendations or other introductions.” Further, Reardon was open to the idea that paid activists would attend classes, saying that while it was not a “central part of the role,” and “not an obvious part of the job to [him],” he is “not opposed to community builders attending classes if they’re welcomed to do so” and that “it would be up to them which classes seemed interesting or relevant and how often they should attend those classes.”
So, to be clear, according to NEST’s leadership, NEST exclusively offers advice and resources to student groups and has no say over programming, but its paid activists often arrange HUEA’s programming. NEST also does not pay anyone to attend classes, but if activists they pay want to attend classes in order to find and convert students, the organization will support those activists with money, no matter how those activists go about their plan. If activists are successful in converting students in classes, NEST would even presumably reward them for it. This double-speak is not surprising. NEST’s leadership, particularly Bluhm, has close relationships with more explicitly activist groups like the CEA. It should be expected that their employees would seek to implement the CEA’s activist plan.
Beyond paying fake students to radicalize undergraduates, international EA behemoths also funnel capital and opportunities to student organizations. This is effective altruists’ second method of undermining the university — using shell undergraduate groups to offer students money and jobs in exchange for ideological fealty.
For instance, international EA organizations like Kairos, working with the CEA, provide significant funding, “career support,” and even “mentorship” for students who create these organizations. Mentorship is a particularly important benefit; the CEA has even described it as the “most valuable aspect of CEA group support” for campus organizations. “Mentors” are paid mid-career professionals with previous experience running student groups who push advice drawn from strategic documents directly written by international EA organizations. Kairos brags that it has “incubated” over 50 organizations this way.
In return for this funding, connections, and invitations to events — all with promises of careers at the end — the controlling EA organizations progressively seek to make students yet better EAs. At the extreme, they brag about leading students to make “pledges” to EA principles. Thus, these EA organizations have pioneered a strategy of first promising non-ideological benefits. Once they have attracted students through those promises, these organizations then condition their support on students’ ideological devotion and, thereby, instill EA ideology into affiliate students.
As a case in point, the HUEA centers non-ideological promises in its rhetoric — promising “research and career resources” to those who join and “career connections” to those who apply to its exclusive retreat, where the organization then pushes EA arguments on students. It even offers a fellowship which explicitly promises to help students with their careers by giving students “direct access to impact-focused professionals” and a “curated network of internships and career opportunities.” National effective altruist organizations like Kairos are even more explicit: by working with them, students are offered “career opportunities” at “top AI safety orgs [sic],” even listing one in the public sector. But these groups ultimately only help students who proclaim absolute fidelity to effective altruism.
Professor Steven Pinker, one of HUEA’s faculty advisors, said that as a faculty advisor, he is not “consult[ed]” on HUEA “policies” or “decisions.” Pinker said he was not aware of HUEA’s connections to NEST, did not know of any “ideological litmus test” for HUEA fellowships, and that he is “not involved in [HUEA’s] internal decision making.” Pinker further said that if he thought HUEA was more focused on “‘long-termism’ and AI doomerism” than “effective philanthropy,” he would “step away from his role as faculty advisor.” HUEA’s undergraduate leadership did not respond to request for comment.
By flooding these institutions with capital and endless job opportunities, effective altruists have created a modern-day spoils system that provides jobs and opportunities in finance, technology, and politics to the ideologically aligned. It is doubtful that the great success of HUEA alums could have happened if not for the connections to which they were exposed. But this is not how the university system is supposed to work. People ought to be given a job because they are the most capable applicants, not because they join fringe ideological sects. And governments should not preferentially hire members of radical political movements, least of all when the groups feeding them candidates cultivate only their own adherents.
The point of a university is not to be a recruitment center for ideologues or a conversion center for instilling fealty. International EA groups want to make universities serve their cause, not the students.
What Harvard needs is a serious account of how far international EA groups have gone in undermining the University. An easy start is a report on how much money EA groups have spent sending non-Harvard affiliates to our classes, whether curricula have been secretly changed to conform to EA ideology, and whether our effective altruist student organization is actually run by students.
And once we learn how much our school has been affected by international effective altruism, we need to shut it down. It is not consistent with Harvard’s job as a research university to also act as a conduit for activism. Students do not attend Harvard classes to be preached a curriculum designed by paid activists, and donors do not give Harvard money so they can provide activists a forum for winning over impressionable college students.
America cannot let her institutions be taken over by a clique of elite ideologues. She cannot let her government be taken over by AI “regulators” who only have the job because of their ideological commitment to EA. She cannot let her universities become training camps run by EA activists. And she cannot let her institutions be held hostage by employers that care more about an applicant’s view on animal rights than their merit. What America needs is to stop these institutional insurrectionists in their tracks.
The Center for Effective Altruism has since transferred this program to another EA organization, Coefficient Giving, via the “Century Fellowship,” as well as to organizations like the Network for EA Support & Training. While Kairos is less forthcoming about its intended recipients, EA groups tend to refer to it as a way of funding “university group organizers.” We will assume that the handoff did not substantially change the nature of the job. This is particularly likely because there is evidence that the CEA remains deeply involved in Kairos’ student outreach programming.
The original career listing from which this information was taken down the same night when the print version of this article was published. Matt Reardon, the Co-President of NEST, sent the Salient the text of the job listing:
Community Builder
Locations: Boston · Bay Area · New York · Chicago · Los Angeles · DC
We are accepting expressions of interest for this role between now and August 18th
The role
We’re hiring full-time community builders to live near key universities and directly mentor and support the EA groups there. You’ll be the person who makes a group run — doing everything from logistics to giving talks to 1-1 advice — so that student leaders can focus on ideas, content, relationships, and their own growth.
These are Nest employees on annual contracts, reporting directly to the founders and upholding our core values and theory of change. The bar for these roles is high, and we’re willing to leave a position unfilled until we find the right person. We expect to hire several people across our cities.
What you’ll do
Embed with the EA groups at universities in your city — mentoring organizers and supporting members directly.
Handle the logistics a group needs to thrive: planning, operations, space, food, and the unglamorous work that makes events actually happen.
Give talks, host events, and offer 1-1 advice that helps members build and pressure-test their own views.
Free student leaders to focus on what only they can do: ideas, content, relationships, and their own development.
Who we’re looking for
Mastery of EA ideas. An impressive breadth and depth of EA knowledge, with the judgment and reasoning transparency to engage the hardest questions honestly.
A gift for great conversations. You can run a discussion, give a talk, and give 1-1 advice that genuinely moves people’s thinking — and makes them want to keep going.
Commitment to the craft. A real, durable commitment to community-building work. You find it meaningful in its own right, not as a stepping stone to something else.
Willing to be where the groups are. You live in, or are willing to relocate to, one of our target cities and want to be on campus with the people you support.
Compensation & benefits
$90,000–$110,000 salary, depending on experience and location.
Health, dental, and vision coverage, retirement contributions, and unlimited vacation (5 weeks expected).
Home office and equipment reimbursement up to $4,000.
Personal development and travel budget of up to $5,000.
Relocation expenses covered up to $5,000.
Quick facts sidebar: Salary $90,000–$110,000 · Full-time, annual contract · 2–6 openings · Reports to Matt or Sarah
As far as I can tell, EA enthusiasts all fall on the spectrum and their judgment about people, relationships, and society is awful. I wouldn’t hire one to run a dog pound.