It’s the revenge of the donors. Or the donor wake-up call. Whatever you call it, we’re in a pivotal moment where donors are openly pulling their support from their alma maters over their handling of the massacre in south Israel.
At some of these schools, the silence was the issue.
Jon Huntsman, the former governor of Utah, pulled his longtime support from his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, saying his foundation will "close its checkbook" because "The University’s silence in the face of reprehensible and historic Hamas evil against the people of Israel (when the only response should be outright condemnation) is a new low." David Magerman of Renaissance Technologies and Clifford Asness of AQR Capital Management also pulled their funding from Penn.
Meanwhile, at Harvard, where student groups released statements blaming Israel for the murder of their own citizens, President Claudine Gay finally released a mealy-mouthed statement on Monday night after the weekend slaughter.
CANCEL CULTURE NEEDS TO COME FOR COLLEGE KIDS DEFENDING HAMAS, TOO
Gay went on to release two more statements as donor pressure mounted. Her Tuesday statement began, "Let there be no doubt that I condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas," because there certainly was doubt.
Harvard graduate Bill Ackman was among the first to ask for the names of the students who had pinned the blame for dead Israeli toddlers and kidnapped grandmother on Israelis themselves.
Ackman tweeted, "Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I do however object to students putting out a statement holding Israel ‘entirely responsible’ for terrorists’ heinous and despicable acts, but doing so anonymously under a corporate veil while leveraging the @Harvard brand. One should be prepared to stand up and be personally accountable for his or her views."
Some people worried the donors were going too far.
Lawrence Summers, the former president of Harvard, called the student statements blaming Israel for their own slaughter "morally unconscionable." But, he added, "I believe the adjustments from universities should come from their conscience and conversations within their communities, not in response to financial pressure."
That’s incorrect. Money is speech and donor funding of institutions conveys an agreement with how the institution is handling itself.
American University Professor Lara Schwartz said it was "deeply troubling" that college students were facing repercussions, such as the pulling of job offers, because they celebrated a slaughter. What about free speech?
In January 2021, Schwartz knew that letting bad ideas spread on campuses was a problem and tweeted, "In 1A law a heckler's veto is govt suppression of speech in anticipation of a likely violent response. A complementary phenomenon in campus free speech / intellectual diversity discourse is the ‘troll's syllabus’ - letting a bad-faith or low-quality idea dominate your course."
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Schwartz linked to her own 2019 piece, noting, "Colleges and universities don’t take a neutral position on all products in the marketplace of ideas." For some reason, those 2021 bad ideas had to be shut down, but these new ones can be allowed to spread unchecked and with no consequences.
What we’ve witnessed over the last two weeks is that most of these institutions have had a long simmering antisemitism problem that has now boiled over. As Jewish students continue to be threatened on campuses, donors must pull their support or understand this is happening in their name.
Antisemitic attacks on campuses have been happening for years, but many chose to ignore the reality for Jewish students. In 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported, "Hostility, including vandalism, threats and slurs toward Jewish students on college campuses increased more than threefold to 155 incidents in 2021 from 47 in 2014."
What will the numbers be with a Cornell professor calling the murder of over 40 babies in south Israel "exhilarating" and "energizing"? We will soon see.
"Hate has no place here" so many schools declare. But that always excluded Jews and never has that been more obvious than after the Oct. 7 slaughter in Israel. Donors can no longer ignore this reality.
It’s not a donor revenge, it’s a donor correction, where many people who kept funding these institutions as they sunk further in the abyss have drawn the line. It’s about time and many more should join them. Funding hate at institutions of higher learning can no longer be accepted. This is the moment to say, "No more."
