Major donors of American universities have begun to withhold funding from those that have taken an ambiguous position after Hamas' attack on Israel or have allowed anti-Israeli demonstrations on their campuses. As a result of such actions, universities will lose millions of dollars.
Source. This was reported by the Financial Times.
Universities such as Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Pennsylvania have come under fire. The president of the latter, Liz Magee, said on Tuesday that it "strongly opposes Hamas's attacks on Israel and anti-Semitism," but admitted that the institution should have made its position clearer earlier.
Nevertheless, entrepreneur and president of the World Jewish Congress Ronald Lauder, son of the founder of the cosmetics company Estée Lauder (Forbes estimates his fortune at $4.6 billion), announced that he would stop funding the University of Pennsylvania.
Jon Huntsman, former US Ambassador to China and Governor of Utah, did the same.
Leslie Wexner, the founder of the women's clothing and cosmetics company Limited Brands (worth $6 billion), told the supervisory board of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University that his foundation was suspending its funding "due to the depressing inability to take a clear and unequivocal position on the killing of Israeli citizens."
Earlier, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers condemned the administration of Harvard University, of which he was once president, for failing to respond to a statement signed by 30 student organizations that blamed Hamas exclusively for the attack.
The law firm Davis Polk told the FT that it had withdrawn a job offer to three Harvard and Columbia law school graduates for making pro-Palestinian statements that "are in direct conflict with our company's value system."
As it became known, about 1,400 Israelis were killed as a result of the attack by the Hamas group, which is recognized as a terrorist organization in the United States.