Alumni and others who donate money to universities should stop contributing to institutions that have exhibited antisemitism or allowed social justice pursuits to replace truth-seeking.
“While Hamas terrorists were slaughtering Israeli Jews, university administrators were figuring out how to spin it,” Marc Rowan wrote in a Wednesday article for The Free Press. Rowan is a private equity CEO and chair of the Board of Overseers of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the Ivy League institution’s business school.
Even more, institutions have enabled antisemitic rhetoric and ideology through sponsoring programs such as University of Pennsylvania’s Palestine Writes Literary Festival, which featured speakers and content maligning Israel and the Jewish people.
Alumni and trustees have also “sat by quietly as the pursuit of truth—the ostensible mission of our elite institutions—was traded for a poorly organized pursuit of social justice and political correctness,” Rowan wrote.
He continued:
Words and ideas matter. They mattered in the motivation of Hamas terrorists slaughtering more than 1,000 innocent civilians and kidnapping more than a hundred in their goal to annihilate Jews. …
While the moral and human cost for what we have done to a generation of students cannot be calculated, the picture is ugly. The financial cost of these policies is large and increasing. Much of this loss is kept silent as acknowledging it endangers the status quo and would encourage questions in the direction of the university from trustees, alumni, and students.
University communities, UPenn included, should not wait for the broken status quo to change. They should call for change from the top … Ultimately, we must change the culture that allows this to take place, a culture that does not deserve our financial support.
Free Press founder and editor, journalist Bari Weiss, appeared on the Fox News show “America’s Newsroom” earlier this week to call on all Americans to “understand the magnitude of what’s happening in Israel.”
Co-anchor Dana Perino asked her to respond to a Gallup poll, published in March, reporting a drop in Democrats’ support of Israel.
“That is because an ideology that dehumanizes Jewish life – that says that Jews are White and privileged and, therefore, can never be victims – has taken root at many of the most important institutions in American life,” Weiss responded, according to Fox.
Weiss also raised the question of why university officials and CEOs of corporations, quick to cheer on Black Lives Matter and the Ukrainian defense, “have stayed silent during the attack that’s left nearly 1000 people in Israel dead,” Fox reported.
“Where are they now?” Weiss asked rhetorically. “It really tells you a lot about people who claim to care about justice.”
Read Rowan’s whole essay and watch Bari Weiss on Fox News.
MORE: Harvard president distances university from Israel-blaming groups
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