We’ll… that’s one way to negotiate.
Um- if he’s that determined to get more money, couldn’t he just sell them to someone else?
This doesn’t sound like a guy who is very interested in rational negotiation.
He should consider running for Congress.
Been taking a leaf out of Sibyl’s book, has he?
So to speak…
This is a perfectly legitimate and legal negotiating tactic and Harvard is the one to blame if he burns the papers.
(:D)
I wonder what he was doing going through a trunk in an abandoned house fulfilling the duties of a contractor anyway. So was he hired to do this and, if so, does the hirer have a claim in full or part to these documents?
If he was hired to clear the house prior to a renovation, any salvage is his, barring agreement to the contrary.
Harvard has a substantial interest in trying to redeem their history on race, and I imagine the documents are worth much more than the appraisal, to them. While threatening to destroy historical documents is of course terrible, I understand it as an emotional outburst in the circumstance.
Put 'em on ebay, let the “several museums and Harvard” get into a bidding war. Can always set a reserve and burn them if the reserve isn’t met.
Unsurprised, for a variety of reasons.
Care to share what those reasons are?
What’s Harvard’s history on race that needs redeeming?
Just to play devil’s advocate, this may be an effective negotiating tactic.
These papers relate to Harvard history, so they are valuable to Harvard, but not really to others. As a result, in any kind of bidding war, Harvard is likely going to pay much less than they’re willing to pay because they just have to outbid other parties that aren’t very interested. If he simply refuses to sell, Harvard knows that they can just wait until he needs the money, or until he dies and someone else inherits them. Harvard will still be around then.
However, if he destroys them, Harvard can no longer wait, and instead of paying just a bit more than the next-highest bidder, they’re motivated to spend closer to what the papers are worth to them. It’s a way of moving some of the surplus from the buyer to the seller.
Heh, my thoughts exactly.
Greener was the first black Harvard grad, in 1870. But in later years, and through the early decades of the 20th century, Harvard grew hostile to its ethnic and religious minorities (there was an unofficial cap on Jewish enrollment, for example), and actually sought to bury its own earlier progressivism on race. For a long time it was difficult to find any official acknowledgment of Greener at Harvard. Obtaining a trove of authentic Greener materials would help them to pretend that they had been proud of him all along.
Threatening to burn the subject under negotiation is a silly negotiating tactic if that is what it is. The linked article suggests it is less to do with negotiation and more to do with the founder’s feeling that the elite Harvard boys are attempting to pull one over on him. He sounds angry and crazy - not calm and collected. Oh, and greedy.
Sounds like a typical Ebay seller. 