Ivy League Mega-Donors Hit Pause Amid Israel Fallout

Billionaire captains of trade who’ve donated a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to their Ivy League alma maters are halting or reconsidering their donations amid the Israel-Hamas chaos on school campuses, the New York Post reports.

Citadel founder Ken Griffin, Apollo CEO Marc Rowan, Estee Lauder tycoon Ron Lauder and scores of different ultra-high-net-worth donors have expressed their alarm over the response of scholars and presidents at Harvard, UPenn and different Ivy Leagues, which have both tacitly supported or tepidly rejected the Hamas terrorist assaults in Israel on October 7.

Rowan joined a name with a whole lot of UPenn alumni final week to debate their technique — and that is only the start of their new recreation plan, in line with sources.

This new era of hedge fund managers, enterprise leaders and self-made entrepreneurs — not like earlier philanthropists who quietly gave cash upon their dying — have erected buildings with their names proudly placed on them, they usually don’t have any intention of staying quietly on the sidelines as colleges embrace tutorial or social causes they discover distasteful, says Yale School of Management Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld.

“Today’s philanthropic business leaders are not driven to counterbalance allegations of misconduct; rather, they are proud of their careers and eager to shape the impact of their gifts while they are younger,” Sonnenfeld says.

“They are donating earlier to share their wisdom, relationships, and energy in real time so they can match the profound finances of each gift.”

Griffin gave $300 million to Harvard final yr alone, and Rowan contributed $50 million to Penn’s Wharton enterprise college.

Lauder, who endowed an institute bearing his title at Wharton, went personally to Penn’s Philadelphia campus to plea with, unsuccessfully, college President Liz Magill to cancel a controversial Palestinian convention extensively panned as antisemitic.

“Free speech is important, but hate speech is not — that must change,” Lauder says.

Like Lauder, Apollo’s co-head of personal fairness, Matt Nord, is halting his donations to the University of Pennsylvania, and, additional, calling for Magill’s resignation.

UPenn is having “an existential crisis” and “time is of the essence,” Nord wrote in a letter to UPenn administration.

“Trustees will no longer be bashful — they’re going to step up a lot more,” says Vahan Gureghian, a former UPenn trustee who resigned final month over the Palestinian pageant.

Pension fund managers say that it’ll take greater than even just a few billion in donations to dent the endowments of Ivy League and different elite colleges; endowments of the Ivies are anticipated to achieve $1 trillion by 2048. Harvard Management Co. simply final week reported that it earned a 2.9% return within the fiscal yr that ended June 30, bringing its whole endowment to $50.7 billion.

Undeterred, deep-pocketed, influential alumni at the moment are seeking to take a extra energetic function within the administration of upper training, Gureghian says.

Academics could be clever to look past their ivy towers, he provides: “You have to be a great CEO as well as understand academics.”