Harvard’s Fundraising Crisis

“Disappointing” is the word being used by Harvard University’s president, Alan Garber, to describe the plunge in financial contributions that the school has recorded this year. His comment, during an interview with the Crimson last week, previews the release later this month of the University’s 2024 financial report, which is expected to show a collapse in funding as a result of Harvard’s pusillanimity in the wake of the war against Israel. Mr. Garber may be disappointed, but he can hardly be surprised. Harvard, in the words of six Jewish students suing the school, has become in the past year “a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment.” The university is in federal court fighting against, incredibly, these Jewish students over its failure to protect them from the “severe and pervasive” antisemitic discrimination that exploded on campus in the wake of October 7.The university claims that it has taken “tangible steps” to address antisemitism and that the Jewish students’ “dissatisfaction with the strategy and speed” of the school’s efforts “does not state a legally cognizable claim.” The dismissal motion was denied by a district judge who ruled that Harvard had failed to respond to campus antisemitism. “In other words,” the judge wrote, “the facts as pled show that Harvard failed its Jewish students.” That lawsuit was filed just a week after Harvard’s president at the time, Claudine Gay, resigned amid criticism over her handling of antisemitism at Cambridge. Her problems began on the evening of October 7 when some 30 student groups issued a letter calling Israel “entirely responsible” for the attack. It took Ms. Gay two days to issue a statement that failed to condemn either Hamas or the letter. It took her another day to denounce Hamas’s “terrorist atrocities.” “Sickened” and “disillusioned” were the words used by a former Harvard president, Secretary Summers, to describe how he felt about the school’s botched response. Ms. Gay became further embroiled when she and a handful of other university presidents were called to testify about antisemitism during a House Committee hearing. She failed to answer “yes” when asked by Congress if calling for the genocide of Jews violated Harvard’s rules. Ms. Gay’s disastrous testimony prompted a coalition of 72 members of Congress to issue a letter demanding her termination. Prominent Harvard alumni, including hedge fund manager Bill Ackman released similar statements. Billionaires Ken Griffin and Len Blavatnik pulled the plug on their longstanding donations to the university. By January, Ms. Gay had resigned, and Mr. Garber became the interim successor. In August he was named president. So what has been Mr. Garber’s big accomplishment in the way of rooting out antisemitism? Harvard, he told donors in June, will increase the number of hot kosher meals offered daily to three from one. “The few remaining Jewish students in Cambridge, Massachusetts,” says our scribe Ira Stoll, “will now be better nourished while their professors and classmates persist in falsely accusing Israel of genocide and apartheid.” Never mind that Harvard still faces at least three federal civil lawsuits, a civil rights probe by the Department of Education, and an investigation by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which announced last week its finding that Harvard had failed to discipline a single student accused last year of committing antisemitic acts on campus. Maybe President Garber views those discoveries as equally “disappointing.” We don’t doubt that the collapse in donations stings. Support from both past and present donors, Harvard reports, accounted for 45 percent of the university’s revenue in fiscal year 2023 and is used to cover such essential expenses as financial aid and faculty salaries. It just might, however, be the incentive that Harvard’s administration needs to enact serious reform. “The only hope for change at Harvard,” Mr. Ackman muses on X, “is a financial crisis.”

Harvard’s Fundraising Crisis

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