(PatriotWise.com) — Ivy League universities are facing blowback from deep-pocketed donors over their tepid support for Israel and, at times, full-throated support for Hamas after last weekend’s deadly terrorist attacks in Israel, the New York Times reported.
According to the Times, billionaire Kenneth Griffin last week contacted the head of the Harvard University board after several student groups signed a letter blaming Israel for Hamas’ deadly attack. Griffin, who has donated over half a billion dollars to Harvard over the years, reportedly urged Harvard to forcefully defend Israel.
On Monday, the Wexner Foundation, the Jewish leadership group founded by billionaire retailer Leslie Wexner, informed Harvard that the group was severing its ties with the university over the school’s response to the Hamas terror attacks.
In a statement posted on X, the Wexner Foundation accused Harvard’s leadership of “tiptoeing” and “equivocating” in their statement on the attack and said that Harvard’s lack of a “clear moral stand” made it clear that the foundation’s “core values” no longer align with Harvard’s.
BIG NEWS:
The Wexner Foundation announces that it is cutting ties with @Harvard over "the dismal failure of Harvard’s leadership to take a clear and unequivocal stand against the barbaric murders of innocent Israeli civilians by terrorists last Saturday." pic.twitter.com/qg1C2grn2j
— Judah Ari Gross (@JudahAriGross) October 16, 2023
But Harvard wasn’t the only Ivy League school to face blowback from deep-pocketed donors.
According to the Times, Wall Street financiers who account for a large portion of Ivy League contributions were also voicing strong opposition to the responses from New York University, Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell University.
More than a dozen big-money donors told the New York Times that they felt that they had an obligation and a right to weigh in on the universities’ controversial public positions on Hamas.
In an op-ed last Wednesday, Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan called for the resignation of two officials from the University of Pennsylvania and urged UPenn donors to stop giving the the school over its failure to condemn anti-Semitism on campus.
Rowan is one of UPenn’s wealthiest donors and chairs the board of advisors at the university’s Wharton School. He urged donors, alumni, and UPenn supporters “who believe we are heading in the wrong direction” to “Close their Checkbooks” until UPenn President Elizabeth Magill and the chair of the university’s board of trustees resign.
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