A Wall Street Journal report on Tuesday discussed the disgust of Jewish donors toward their alma mater in the wake of the lack of unequivocal condemnations of the barbarous Hamas assault on Israel and the pro-Hamas protests on campuses.
The report states: David Magerman was in Israel celebrating a holiday by dancing with a Torah in a 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.
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.
According to the report, which also briefly discusses Harvard, “Penn faces perhaps the biggest donor revolt.”
Alumnus Marc Rowan, the chief executive of Apollo Global Management who has donated over $50 million to Penn, told WSJ that he won’t donate more unless University President Liz Magill steps down, saying that her weak response to the Hamas assault stands in sharp contrast to the university’s strong condemnations of the killing of George Floyd and the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade. He was especially disturbed by the fact that she chose to write about her dog on Instagram the weekend of the attack.
Many other donors have also curtailed or are rethinking their donations to Penn, with some having done so even prior to October 7 due to the increasingly “progressive groupthink” on college campuses.
“I have long been dismayed at the drift away from true freedom of thought, expression and speech at our best universities, very much including my beloved alma mater Penn,” hedge fund manager Cliff Asness wrote to Magill on Oct. 16. “I do not like making something like this about money—but it appears to be one of the only paths that has any hope of mattering.”
Scott Shay, the former chairman of Signature Bank, stopped donating to Northwestern University in 2020 after researching a book on antisemitic conspiracy theories on campus, and now donates to Hillel and Chabad organizations at the university instead.
Shay said that in the wake of the Hamas assault, more donors are following in his footsteps.
“I’ve heard from four people within the last hour,” Shay said Friday.
Source: (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
