"David Magerman was in Israel celebrating a holiday by dancing with a Torah in synagogue when Hamas attacked the country earlier this month. When his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, put out a statement a few days later that called the assault "horrific" but didn't explicitly condemn Hamas, he was incensed.
Magerman, a hedge-fund veteran turned venture capitalist who has donated millions to the school, has since cut his ties with Penn. "I was just pushed over the edge by the equivocation of the response," he said.
Top universities such as Harvard and Penn are facing backlash from alumni angry about the schools' reactions to the Oct. 7 attacks and their aftermath. The alumni say their schools didn't move quickly and forcefully enough to condemn Hamas and denounce antisemitism, and they have done a poor job since then protecting Jewish students as on-campus tensions rise.
Some say it was the final straw after years of growing disenchantment with the schools over what they see as a leftward political shift. Many big donors have announced plans to stop giving or said they are reconsidering future gifts.
The pullback could dent the finances of some universities that rely on big givers to fill their coffers. People giving $1 million or more made up less than 1% of donors but 57% of total donations across surveyed U.S. universities, according to a study by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education covering the fiscal year ended June 30, 2022.
At Harvard, more than 30 student groups signed a letter laying blame for Hamas's violence on Israel's treatment of Palestinians over decades. University leaders, including new President Claudine Gay, wrote on Oct. 9 to the Harvard community that they were "heartbroken by the death and destruction unleashed by the attack by Hamas." The statement attracted criticism from former Harvard President Larry Summers and others for not distancing Harvard from the student groups' stance and for not explicitly condemning Hamas.
On Oct. 10, Gay followed up with a note explicitly condemning "the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas" and saying student groups don't speak for Harvard. She shared another statement via video two days later.
Retail billionaire Leslie Wexner's foundation said it would cut financial ties with Harvard and end a program it funded at the school for Israelis. Wexner and his wife have donated more than $42 million to the Cambridge, Mass., university.
On Monday, a group of prominent alumni including Sen. Mitt Romney and investors Seth Klarman and Bill Helman published an open letter to Harvard criticizing the school's leadership in what they described as an increasingly hostile environment for Harvard's Jewish students. The group outlined steps it said the school should take, such as restricting campus protests to enrolled students and creating and making mandatory a semesterlong class on critical thinking and fact-finding.
"We fear that history is on the verge of repeating itself," the letter said.
Penn faces perhaps the biggest donor revolt. Prominent alumni such as cosmetics tycoon Ronald Lauder and Apollo Global Management Chief Executive Marc Rowan had already clashed with the school last month when it hosted a Palestinian literary festival they believed showed the university was tolerant of antisemitism.
Top school officials released a statement condemning antisemitism ahead of the literary festival. Following the Hamas attacks, University President Liz Magill wrote on Oct. 10: "We are devastated by the horrific assault on Israel by Hamas that targeted civilians and the taking of hostages over the weekend." She issued a follow-up statement Oct. 15 condemning Hamas.
"When the university wants to say something, it knows how and it can say it forcefully," Rowan, chair of the board of advisers at Penn's Wharton School, told The Wall Street Journal. "And the university doesn't seem to be able to find its voice with respect to antisemitism."
He said the response to the Hamas attacks was a departure from the school's strong condemnations of the killing of George Floyd and the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Rowan, who has donated more than $50 million to Penn, has said he won't give more unless Magill and Board of Trustees Chair Scott Bok step down.
In the past few years, dissident alumni groups have started cropping up for people who believe progressive groupthink has taken over college campuses. Several significant donors said they don't want to force their worldviews on anyone, but that they do want college students to be exposed to a diversity of views and be able to engage in robust dialogue." [1]
1. U.S. News: Donors to Elite Universities Chafe Over Mideast Conflict. Ensign, Rachel Louise; Chung, Juliet. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 25 Oct 2023: A.6.
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