Billionaire captains of industry who’ve donated hundreds of millions of dollars to their Ivy League alma maters are halting or reconsidering their donations amid the Israel-Hamas chaos on college campuses, the New York Post reports.
Citadel founder Ken Griffin, Apollo CEO Marc Rowan, Estee Lauder tycoon Ron Lauder and scores of other ultra-high-net-worth donors have expressed their alarm over the response of students and presidents at Harvard, UPenn and other Ivy Leagues, which have either tacitly supported or tepidly rejected the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7.
Rowan joined a call with hundreds of UPenn alumni last week to discuss their strategy — and this is just the beginning of their game plan, according to sources.
This new generation of hedge fund managers, business leaders and self-made entrepreneurs — unlike earlier philanthropists who quietly gave money upon their death — have erected buildings with their names proudly put on them, and they have no intention of staying quietly on the sidelines as schools embrace academic or social causes they find distasteful or offensive, 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 last year alone, and Rowan contributed $50 million to Penn’s Wharton business school.
Lauder, who endowed an institute bearing his name at Wharton, went personally to Penn’s Philadelphia campus to plea with, unsuccessfully, university President Liz Magill to cancel a controversial Palestinian conference widely panned as antisemitic.
“Free speech is important, but hate speech is not — that must change,” Lauder says.
Like Lauder, Apollo’s co-head of private equity, Matt Nord, is halting his donations to the University of Pennsylvania, and, further, calling for Magill’s resignation.
UPenn is having “an existential crisis” and “time is of the essence,” Nord wrote in a letter to UPenn management.
“Trustees will no longer be bashful — they’re going to step up a lot more,” says Vahan Gureghian, a former UPenn trustee who resigned last month over the Palestinian festival.
Pension fund managers say that it will take more than even a few billion in donations to dent the endowments of Ivy League and other elite schools; endowments of the Ivies are expected to reach $1 trillion by 2048. Harvard Management Co. just last week reported that it earned a 2.9% return in the fiscal year that ended June 30, bringing its total endowment to $50.7 billion.
Undeterred, deep-pocketed, influential alumni are now looking to take a more active role in the management of higher education, Gureghian says.
Academics would be wise to look beyond their ivy towers, he adds: “You have to be a great CEO as well as understand academics.”