Donors and students fed up with antisemitism in universities

Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania lost several donors. Columbia University received a flood of signatures calling for the immediate dismissal of a professor who supports Hamas.

Universidad de Harvard. Una de las universidades que están viviendo consecuencias por sus actitudes antisemitistas. — Digital Camera

Published by

Rosana Rábago Sainz

18 de octubre, 2023

Topics:

Harvard University, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania are being widely criticized for the position they all adopted at the beginning of the war between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas.

Harvard was met with a wave of public backlash as soon as the conflict began. The most criticized action was the letter sent by the university's Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC), which held "the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence" during the attack perpetrated by Hamas.

Supported by hundreds of students, the letter was condemned across the country, with billionaire Bill Ackman warning those who supported the statement that they would be placed on a blacklist that would prevent them from accessing Wall Street companies. Following this, the groups Amnesty International at Harvard, Harvard College Act on a Dream (AOD), the Harvard Undergraduate Nepali Student Association (HUNSA), the Harvard Islamic Society and the Harvard Undergraduate Ghungroo withdrew their signatures from the controversial letter.

The damage, however, had already been done. Harvard has continued to see the consequences for this letter. Harvard Computer Science professor Boaz Barak was one of the first university officials to condemn to action. He asked the university to withdraw affiliation from all those organizations that signed the letter:

Harvard loses two of its biggest donors

Shortly thereafter, the Harvard lost two members of its executive board. Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer and his wife, Batia, announced their departure from the university in protest of the the initial response to the Hamas attacks.

A week later, Harvard received another blow: the Wexner Foundation and its owner, Leslie Wexner, creator of the Victoria's Secret brand, released a statement announcing that they were also breaking ties with the university. In their case, they alleged, it was due to a change in Harvard's values that "no longer align" with those of the Wexner Foundation:

Columbia receives 50,000 signatures to fire professor who supported Hamas

Harvard was not the only Ivy League university to come under fire for the way it handled the massacre in Israel in early October. Columbia University was also targeted for what one of its professors, Joseph Massad, wrote after the massacre. Just one day after the terrorist attacks, he wrote an op-ed in which he claimed that Israel was full of "cruel colonizers," while Hamas terrorists were "resistance fighters":

The sight of the Palestinian resistance fighters storming Israeli checkpoints separating Gaza from Israel was astounding, not only to the Israelis but especially to the Palestinian and Arab peoples who came out across the region to march in support of the Palestinians in their battle against their cruel colonizers.

The article was the subject of widespread backlash as it revealed the professor's pro-Hamas ideals. Concerned about this issue, a 23-year-old Columbia student, Maya Platek, started a petition on Change.org calling for Massad's immediate dismissal:

Condoning and supporting terrorism is not acceptable. ... Massad’s decision to praise the abhorrent attack encourages violence and misinformation in and outside of campus, particularly putting many Jewish and Israeli students on campus at risk. Moreover, many students have expressed that they feel unsafe in the presence of a professor who supports the horrific murders of civilians. ... We call on Columbia University to hold Massad responsible for his comments and immediately remove him from the Columbia faculty.

The initiative, created on Oct. 13, achieved almost 50,000 signatures within four days.

Jon Huntsman withdraws his donations to the University of Pennsylvania

Failure to issue any statement about the massacre was also frowned upon by donors and students. This is what happened at the University of Pennsylvania. There, Jon Huntsman, the former governor of Utah and former United States ambassador to Russia, China and Singapore, also announced that he was ending his financial support for the institution.

He did so via an email, which was accessed by The Daily Pennsylvanian. He stated that "silence is antisemitism, and antisemitism is hate." For that reason, he assured Penn President Liz Magill that he would stop making donations to the university:

To the outsider, it appears that Penn has become deeply adrift in ways that make it almost unrecognizable. Moral relativism has fueled the university’s race to the bottom and sadly now has reached a point where remaining impartial is no longer an option. 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. Silence is antisemitism, and antisemitism is hate, the very thing higher ed was built to obviate. Consequently, Huntsman Foundation will close its checkbook on all future giving to Penn - something that has been a source of enormous pride for now three generations of graduates. My siblings join me in this rebuke.

He is not the only one taking action against the University of Pennsylvania. Breitbart reported that, after a three-hour emergency meeting, Vahan Gureghian resigned from the university's board of directors for the same reason.

Several university presidents around the world condemn the Hamas attack

The consequences continue to be felt in universities throughout the world. For this reason, several presidents from various American universities and even from other parts of the world joined together and showed their solidarity with Israel.

Axios obtained exclusive access to a statement in which the directors of Jewish (Yeshiva University), Catholic (University of Notre Dame), Christian (Babylor University) and public (SUNY and CUNY) universities, as well as HBCUs such as Dillard University, said they were "horrified" by the massacre perpetrated by Hamas:

We are horrified and sickened by the brutality and inhumanity of Hamas. Murdering innocent civilians including babies and children, raping women and taking the elderly as hostages are not the actions of political disagreement but the actions of hate and terrorism. The basis of all universities is a pursuit of truth, and it is times like these that require moral clarity. Like the fight against ISIS, the fight against Hamas is a fight against evil. We, the presidents and chancellors of universities and colleges across the United States of America and the world, stand with Israel, with the Palestinians who suffer under Hamas' cruel rule in Gaza and with all people of moral conscience.