The fallout for elite schools over their moral confusion around Israel, and their seeming support of Hamas and its terror campaigns, continues to grow.
The latest:
Hedge fund tycoon Cliff Asness unloaded in a letter to his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania.
He slams a literary festival this month at the school whose participants engaged in naked Jew-hatred and president Elizabeth Magill’s appalling attempt to, in effect, equate the recent atrocities in Israel and Israel’s response.
The lit party featured writers and artists who long to “commemorate” the end of the Jewish state and shriek “Death to Israel” on social media; Asness rightly called it an “antisemitic Burning Man festival.”
Magill, in the aftermath of Hamas murders, belatedly put out a statement refusing to call them what they were: terrorism.
Asness had enough, cutting off donations.
And he’s not alone.
Apollo Management CEO Marc Rowan is spearheading a drive to convince other Penn alumni to end their giving until new leadership with the courage to stand up against woke Jew-haters is put in place.
Hedge funder David Magerman has closed the checkbook, as has Jon Huntsman. Billionaire philanthropist Ronald Lauder is reconsidering his financial relationship with the school.
One of the school’s trustees, Vahan Guregian, resigned in disgust at Penn’s actions.
The move echoes the similar response to Harvard’s moral cowardice on this issue: 31 of its student organizations insanely blamed Israel for Hamas’ terrorism, and all the school could muster in response was a weak-tea statement from its president, Claudine Gay.
Now, Citadel’s Ken Griffin has declared the students who backed Hamas anathema, as has another hedge funder, Bill Ackman.
The visible support for Hamas among students and faculty at top schools is the fruit of the left’s long march through American institutions.
It will likely prove to be as durable as it is ugly.
Which means that people with real influence, like Asness, Rowan and others, must fight it with everything they’ve got.
Happily, they’ve got quite a lot.
