US Private Universities Face Donor Pressure To Support Israel

With the Israel-Hamas conflict unleashing furious emotions, American universities have struggled to walk an almost impossibly narrow line: satisfying the demands of rich donors that they more clearly support Israel, while also respecting protesters' rights of free expression.

Several wealthy Americans have threatened to withdraw their financial support from prestigious private schools like the Ivy League's Harvard University in Massachusetts, or the University of Pennsylvania, known as UPenn.

The Wexner Foundation, which works to prepare young Jewish leaders in North America and Israel, went a step further: ending its partnership with Harvard's Kennedy School.

Citing what it called the "dismal failure of Harvard's leadership to take a clear and unequivocal  stand against the barbaric murders  of innocent Israeli civilians by terrorists," the Wexner family, founders of the Bath & Body Works chain, formally severed their ties to the school.

Meantime, Marc Rowan, the CEO of the Apollo Global Management investment fund and a major donor to UPenn, demanded the resignation of the school's president, Elizabeth Magill. He criticized her in particular for the school's hosting two weeks earlier of a festival of Palestinian literature which, he said, included some "well-known anti-Semites and fomenters of hate and racism."

Kenneth Griffin, the CEO of the Citadel investment fund and one of Harvard's biggest donors, and Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics group and another UPenn donor, have also expressed their displeasure, according to American media.