What’s New
One week ago, colleges began facing pressure to acknowledge and respond to Hamas’s attack on Israel this month and the resulting Israeli military response in the Gaza Strip, which have together killed thousands of people.
Many institutions faced backlash over their initial statements on the conflict; some college leaders tried again, but criticism persisted. Pro-Palestinian student groups protested on Thursday during a “Day of Resistance.” Presidents and professors heard calls to resign. And donors pulled funding.
The Details
Ivy League Donors Cut Ties
Donors at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania are severing financial ties over what they see as the universities’ lack of explicit support for Israel.
The leaders of the Wexner Foundation, the Jewish philanthropic organization founded by the billionaire Les Wexner, said on Monday they were “stunned and sickened” by Harvard’s response to the attack, which they said had failed to “take a clear and unequivocal stand” against the killing of Israeli civilians. The longtime partner of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government announced it would cut “financial and programmatic relationships” with the university. (Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, initially said she was “heartbroken by the death and destruction” in both Israel and Gaza; she said in a statement on Friday that Hamas had committed “barbaric atrocities” against Israel.)
Penn has been engulfed in controversy for weeks, after the university hosted a Palestine Writes Literature Festival last month with speakers who had previously expressed antisemitic views. On Sunday, President M. Elizabeth Magill issued a statement, her second in a few days, that condemned Hamas and sought to distance the university from the festival.
Still, the university’s response was the last straw for several prominent Penn donors. A trio of Penn alumni — Jon Huntsman Jr., a former Republican governor of Utah and U.S. ambassador; Marc Rowan, chief executive of Apollo Global Management; and David Magerman, a philanthropist — announced this week that they’re halting donations to the institution.
A President Faces Calls to Resign
In a letter published last week in PhillyVoice, Rowan called on fellow alumni and donors to join him in halting donations until President Magill and the chair of Penn’s Board of Trustees, Scott L. Bok, resign over their “failure” to condemn “antisemitic hatred.”
In her statement on Sunday, Magill acknowledged that the university “should have moved faster” in its condemnation of Hamas. Bok responded to Rowan’s remarks in a letter published Monday in The Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn’s student newspaper, affirming the institution’s commitment to the Jewish community.
Professors Face Scrutiny for Anti-Israel Comments
An instructor at Stanford University was temporarily removed from teaching duties after reports that he made anti-Jewish remarks in two different classrooms, singled out Jewish students and called them “colonizers,” and minimized the Holocaust. Stanford said in a statement last week that the instructor, whom it didn’t name, isn’t teaching while the university investigates: “Academic freedom does not permit the identity-based targeting of students.”
At Columbia University, a professor has faced calls to resign following an October 8 article in which he characterized the Hamas attack against Israel as “astonishing” and “awesome.” A petition to remove Joseph Massad, a professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history, had surpassed 34,000 signatures as of Monday morning. The petition is currently unavailable and under review by change.org. Massad’s defenders — in a letter signed by over 500 students, faculty, alumni, and affiliates of the department and university, plus over 1,000 other people — argue Massad has a right to academic freedom.
College Leaders Make Another Statement
A group of presidents representing religious and non-religious colleges released a joint statement Tuesday condemning the Hamas attacks and expressing support for Israel, according to Axios. Among the signatories were leaders of Yeshiva University, several Christian and Roman Catholic colleges, public college systems, historically Black colleges and universities, and religious higher-education groups.
The college presidents “stand with Israel, with the Palestinians who suffer under Hamas’s cruel rule in Gaza, and with all people of moral conscience,” the statement said. The group’s founding members are Yeshiva, Baylor University, the University of Notre Dame, Dillard University, and the State University of New York and City University of New York systems.
Students Demand Colleges Increase Support
Ahead of last week’s pro-Palestinian “Day of Resistance,” 10 pro-Israel groups sent a letter to university presidents urging them to condemn Hamas and provide “support” for their Jewish communities, The Chronicle reported.
Meanwhile, the national organization of Students for Justice in Palestine, or SJP, released a statement saying that “the same voices that call for the protection of Jewish students” should also call for the protections of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students. These students are facing “a mass campaign of doxxing, harassment, and direct threats,” the statement said.
Student advocacy groups condemned Israel’s attacks on Gaza and charged that the presidents’ statements have ignored Palestinian suffering. The University of Minnesota’s SJP chapter said last week that the institution’s statement ignored “the plight of the Palestinian people.”
The Backdrop
Tensions over the Israel-Palestine conflict have simmered on campuses for years, but over the past week, a major fault line has emerged in higher ed. Jewish and Palestinian students are demanding clear, unambiguous support from their colleges, but support for one group is often perceived as opposition to the other.
Survey results published Tuesday by Generation Lab, a data-intelligence company studying young people’s views, found that more than half of the 1,000 students surveyed blame Hamas for the October 7 attack, and two-thirds say Hamas committed an act of terrorism. Twelve percent of respondents described the attack as a justified act of resistance.
What to Watch For
In politicized moments, college leaders often conjure an ideal: They describe their institutions as essential neutral arbiters that can bring together diverse perspectives for constructive dialogue.
Bears for Palestine, a student organization at the University of California at Berkeley, doesn’t see a path forward for conversation. “This humanitarian crisis is not a two-sided discussion, and pro-Israel narratives simply exist to silence Palestinian voices,” the group told the Los Angeles Times in a statement.
The executive director of Beach Hillel, which supports Jewish students at California State University at Long Beach, told the Times that she’d hosted programs for years in coordination with non-Jewish student leaders to bring students to the region. “I’ve spent my whole career trying to build bridges and try to hear from other voices and understand the Palestinian perspective,” ChayaLeah Sufrin said. Now, she’s not sure that’s possible.
