I would suggest just one single donor pushing this...maybe as a joke to see if they’d actually take it serious, and Harvard fell for it.
The problem to this (it’s a one-year ‘visiting fellow’ deal) is that there’s going to be a lecture or two.
So here’s this guy. Former Army...three brief years in Army intelligence...not widely traveled....no real education beyond that period....and a couple of years in prison. You wheel this guy out to some Harvard lecture where 99-percent of the crowd is smarter than Manning. Manning starts to get challenged on his view of things and starts to fall apart. If you were looking for a major ‘snowflake’....this individual is ultra-fragile. Manning won’t be able to handle any criticism or challenges to his perception of things. After one appearance, Manning will go into hiding on campus for the rest of the year.