Harvard investigating fencing coach following suspicious home sale
Harvard University has opened an independent investigation into fencing coach Peter Brand after a Boston Globe report revealed a home sale between Brand and the father of a current and former student-athlete.
Brand reportedly sold a three-bedroom home assessed at $549,300 for almost a million dollars in 2016. The buyer, Jie Zhao, was the father of a high school junior looking to apply to Harvard with the hope of joining its fencing team. Zhao’s son was later accepted and joined the fencing team.
Zhao’s older son had already been attending Harvard and was on the fencing team at the time.
Zhao, the co-founder of iTalk Global Communications Inc., never lived a day in the house, per the report. He would later sell it 17 months after purchase for a $324,500 loss.
An area assessor noted that the transaction “makes no sense.”
‘I want to help Peter Brand’
Speaking to the Globe, Zhao said that he wanted to help Brand because he felt bad about his 12-mile commute to work. “From my perspective, I’m just making his life better plus making a good investment,” he said.
He followed up by saying, “If I know the policies that the coach cannot sell to students or parents of student, I would not do it. I have no idea, right? I don’t think there’s any violation or anything.”
Zhao told the Globe he intended to rent his new property, but his father’s illness diverted his attention. He sold the property in order to fund an investment and hired a real estate agent to complete the sale.
“I told him: ‘Sell the first one who gives the offer,’” Zhao said.
Both of Zhao’s children told the Globe that they were unaware that their father had bought Brand’s house.
A conflict of interest
Brand did not respond to the Globe’s request for comment, but Harvard spokeswoman Rachel Dane told the Globe, “We are committed to ensuring the integrity of our recruitment practices.”
The university pointed to its conflict-of-interest policy which states, “a conflict of interest exists when individual commitment to the University may be compromised by personal benefit.”
The policy, found here, goes on to state that “employees are expected to avoid situations or activities that could interfere with their unencumbered exercise of judgment in the best interests of Harvard University.”
The investigation comes nearly one month after the FBI charged 50 parents, coaches and administrators in a nationwide college admissions and recruiting scandal dubbed “Operation Varsity Blues.”
Harvard was not implicated in the scheme that involved nine coaches and one athletics administrator.
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