With Harvard University President Claudine Gay mired in controversy over anti-Semitism on campus and mounting evidence that she engaged in serial plagiarism, donors to the institution have responded differently to the controversies.
The list of donors who’ve pledged to pull their funding has steadily grown, with billionaire Len Blavatnik emerging late this year as the latest to announce that he would be pausing all contributions to Harvard over its treatment of anti-Semitism. Blavatnik’s family foundation had previously given the university at least $270 million.
Blavatnik’s decision to pull donations comes as one Wall Street executive said that “half of Wall Street” will be halting donations to some of America’s most powerful universities to protest how the institutions have responded to anti-Semitism and pro-Palestinian protests in the wake of the October 7th terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel.
The Wexner Foundation, chaired by family members of ex-Victoria’s Secret CEO Les Wexner, pulled about $2 million in support from Harvard, saying that it was stunned and sickened at the dismal failure of Harvard’s leadership to take a clear and unequivocal stand against the barbaric murders of innocent Israeli civilians by terrorists.”
Bill Ackman, the billionaire founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, called the board’s continued support of Gay “enormously damaging to Harvard” and “incredibly destructive to their own reputations.” Ackman says that the university has lost an astonishing $1 billion amid the scandals, though the sum was reported before Blatvik’s decision to pull donations.
But some high-profile donors to the university have not, at least publicly, responded to the controversies, and appear to be set to continue their donations to Harvard. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, for example, previously pledged a whopping $500 million to the university to establish an artificial intelligence lab. Neither the initiative nor Mark Zuckerberg have publicly commented on the scandals.
There’s also John and Laura Arnold, who through their philanthropic organization Arnold Ventures have contributed roughly $67 million to the Harvard President and Fellows in the past decade. Arnold did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Wire.
Swiss entrepreneur and billionaire philanthropist Ernesto Bertarelli announced a $75 million gift to Harvard Medical school earlier this year while Hansjorg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire who has emerged as a major political donor to Democrats in the United States, gave $350 million to the university in 2022. Neither the Bertarelli Foundation nor the Wyss Foundation responded to a request for comment.
Michael Bloomberg’s Bloomberg Philanthropies invested an undisclosed amount to Harvard University for the creation of the Bloomberg Center for Cities, an institute aimed at supporting a “new generation of public servants as they encounter unprecedented challenges” and producing “new research and instructional materials that will help city leaders.”
Bloomberg, who is Jewish and attended Harvard Business School, has been an outspoken supporter of Israel. In the aftermath of the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack against Israel that killed roughly 1,200 people, including women and children, Bloomberg Philanthropies pledged to donate $44 million to Magen David Adom, an Israeli nonprofit organization. But Bloomberg has remained silent on Harvard president Gay’s response to anti-Semitism on campus or the mounting evidence that she repeatedly engaged in plagiarism.
His foundation did not respond to a request for comment.
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The response, and lack thereof, from Harvard donors comes as Gay has faced scrutiny over both her response to anti Semitism on campus and findings that she has serially engaged in plagiarism in her academic work.
Harvard University has been especially embroiled in controversy since Gay, who assumed office in July 2023, equivocated in a congressional hearing on anti-Semitism when asked whether or not calling for genocide against Jews constituted a violation of the university’s code of conduct.
At today’s hearing, Harvard’s President shamefully refused to say whether the calling for the mass violence and genocide of the Jewish people is considered harassment or bullying according to Harvard’s own code of conduct.
Claudine Gay should resign immediately. pic.twitter.com/gjzmTHUcec
— Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) December 5, 2023
But Gay was met with public repute yet again when conservative journalist and activist Chris Rufo and investigative journalist Christopher Brunet reported that she had plagiarized portions of her Ph.D dissertation, pulling directly from other texts without referencing the original authors.
WINNING: According to the Harvard Crimson, Claudine Gay will "request three corrections to her 1997 Ph.D. dissertation," vindicating my original story about her plagiarism. Gay has now asked for six total corrections related to plagiarism—a stunning admission of guilt. pic.twitter.com/uSWUh7tH9G
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) December 21, 2023
Rufo and Brunet pointed out that the use of direct quotes from other academics is in direct violation of the university’s standards of academic integrity.