After more than thirty Harvard student groups blamed Israel for the Hamas terrorist attacks, various donors and allies have decided to cut off relations or funding to the university for the lukewarm stance university leadership took regarding the murders of thousands of Jews since last Saturday, October 7. The latest major ally to cut ties with Havard is billionaire and former CEO of Victoria's Secret Leslie Wexner.
The Wexner Foundation, a philanthropic organization that seeks to develop and inspire Jewish leaders in Israel and the United States, announced it would sever relations with Harvard University following the “dismal failure” of university authorities to condemn the attacks of Hamas.
“Harvard’s leaders were indeed tiptoeing, equivocating,” reads the strong statement published on X, formerly Twitter, signed by Leslie and Abigail Wexner, Wexner Foundation President Rabbi B. Elka Abrahamson and the general director for Israel, Ra’anan Avital.
Fantastic news - the next Ivy League domino falls as Wexner Foundation (led by Limited Brands founder Leslie Wexner) cuts off all funding to Harvard stating -
“We are stunned and sickened at the dismal failure of Harvard’s leadership to take a clear and unequivocal stand… pic.twitter.com/eqI1np9cnq
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) October 16, 2023
“In the absence of this clear moral stand, we have determined that the Harvard Kennedy School and The Wexner Foundation are no longer compatible partners. Our core values and those of Harvard no longer align,” the statement continues, which states that the Israeli scholarship holders no longer felt safe or comfortable at the institution, even before the Hamas attacks.
“Many of our Israel Fellows no longer feel marginalized at HKS. They feel abandoned,” reads the statement.
The dissolution of relations represents a hard blow for Harvard since the Wexner Foundation had deep agreements with the university, supporting a scholarship program at the Kennedy School of Government that allows Israeli government and public service professionals to study at Harvard for a year. The Wexner fortune is valued at $6 billion, according to Forbes.
The Wexners are not the only ones to cut ties with Harvard. Last week, Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer and his wife, Batia, announced their departure from Harvard’s executive board in protest of the authorities’ initial response to the Hamas attacks.
The controversy began when more than 30 student groups signed a controversial statement issued by the University Committee of Solidarity with Palestine (PSC), where Israel was blamed for the massacre caused by the terrorist group Hamas.
Since then, various student groups, such as Amnesty International at Harvard, Harvard College Act on a Dream (AOD), the Harvard Undergraduate Nepali Student Association (HUNSA), the Harvard Islamic Society and Harvard Undergraduate Ghungroo, withdrew their support for the statement following national rejection and also a tacit threat from billionaire Bill Ackman to the signatories that Wall Street would blacklist them from being hired.
I have been asked by a number of CEOs if @harvard would release a list of the members of each of the Harvard organizations that have issued the letter assigning sole responsibility for Hamas’ heinous acts to Israel, so as to insure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their… https://t.co/7kzGOAGwp9
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) October 10, 2023
