RECENT EVENTS
September 29, 2025
The conference will focus on the full range of causes related to effective altruism, including farmed animal welfare, global health and development, biosecurity, AI safety, and more.
September 7, 2025
Join a community of thinkers and doers dedicated to solving pressing global challenges. Priority applications are due in one week.
September 15, 2025
We are accepting applications for multiple roles on the board. This includes three pre-existing roles (Treasurer, Events Lead, Communications Lead), as well as a new role (Arete Fellowship Lead).
OUR FOUNDATIONMost of us want to improve the world.
We see suffering, injustice, and death, and feel moved to do something about it.
But figuring out what that “something” is, let alone actually doing it, can be a difficult and disheartening challenge.
HUEA aims to help the Harvard student community respond to this challenge.
OUR OBJECTIVESHarvard Undergraduate EA has been dedicated to building a community of students who continuously examine strategies to best improve the world and act on those insights in their own lives.
Our theory of change centers on expanding the pipeline of individuals prepared to address the world’s most pressing challenges. We aim to equip students, both in thought and in practice, to engage with these issues beginning at the undergraduate level.
OUR RESEARCH & STUDIESHow do we reconcile some of the implications of the moral premises of Peter Singer’s arguments?
What if EA has more in common with deontology than it first appears?
Why the main ideas of EA are aligned with Christian ethics.
How to optimize the transition from school to work with specific strategies and mindset shifts.
We need to stop unleashing more things we do not fully understand.
Why keeping your options open isn’t as important as most people think.
What crows can teach us about AI alignment
Where money in EA comes from and where it goes in 2021 and 2022.
Engaged and motivated workers are more likely to make a positive impact.
An illustrated book based on Peter Singer’s “The Drowning Child”.
Really, though, EA doesn’t use your whole brain…it only uses half of your brain: the left half.
Although there is quite a bit of dissent within the community, EA’s lack of support for an issue that many feel is the most tangible threat to humanity does not go unnoticed.
Chances are high that you have felt lost sometimes with the thousands of charities, the sheer amount of causes there are and most importantly, the billions of people suffering…
Drug policy reform (DPR) is currently overlooked by EA, despite having vast potential to make a difference to mental health.
A world in which no one has an obligation to support those immediately around them is a community that will falter and collapse.
Being able to choose what one does for a living, under capitalism at least, is a privilege rather than a right – and in failing to recognise this fact, EA systematically discriminates against marginalized communities in its efforts to “do good better.”
Tackling challenges on a global scale demands some sort of quantitative framework. What professions and experiences, however, are left behind when we rely too heavily on these optimized models?
In this blog post, I analyze three different cause areas of Effective Altruism (global health and development, animal welfare, and existential risk) from the perspective of different philosophical theories of well being.
An overview of the unique challenges and opportunities of donating a kidney while young
By incorporating science-backed compromises we are able to work with the cognitive biases that stand in the way of applying EA to our daily lives.
In which I accidentally run over a Nobel prize winner and, subsequently, ask myself, "How do I know that I'm actually making the right decisions?"
An infographic: What characteristics should we consider when supporting non-profit efforts?
A response to some of the criticisms put forward in the readings from week eight of the Arete Fellowship, highlighting which are more and less persuasive.
Catastrophic global events are scary - but we know nothing about them, and EA should probably sideline x-risks.
Effective altruism prioritizes action that leads to immediate concrete, quantifiable results. Sometimes, however, the best option is not always the one that is most ‘cost-effective’ or tangible or immediate.
The EA community should therefore question the merit of the AI cause area, and in doing so, reassert its commitments to impartiality and equity.
These are the Executive Summaries of two final reports from a Philanthropy Advisory Fellowship project to research strategy and best practices for funding research in brain science. This research was conducted on behalf of PAF client One Mind.
By presenting EA as an open dialogue on how to best help others, we can grow the EA community.
The approach that the EA has adopted runs the detrimental risk of not paying enough attention to a growing concern that can quickly bring about the extinction of the human race.
OUR NUMBERS
OUR MENTORS
“Effective altruism — efforts that actually help people rather than making you feel good or helping you show off — is one of the great new ideas of the 21st century.”
— Dr. Steven Pinker
“What Harvard EA does is maximally important. I wish I had a group like this when I was an undergrad.”
— Dr. Joshua Greene