Who determines Penn’s future: donors or the university?

Since then, some of Penn’s most influential alumni and benefactors — including Mr. Lauder, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and “Law & Order” creator Dick Wolf — have joined Mr. Rowan in securing funding.

But even before the conference, tensions had been simmering at Penn over what some donors saw as the university’s shift to the left, including a transgender athlete on the women’s swimming team and the dean’s push for diversity, equity and inclusivity programs. company. school. They were also concerned about the declining number of Jewish students.

It turned out that a number of donors had stopped their contributions well before the conference.

“Conservatives have a series of intersecting issues, and pro-Israel issues are one of them,” said Robert Vitalis, a Penn professor who previously led the university’s Middle East Center and supported the Palestinian writers. “The conference became a vehicle.”

It is not unusual for donors, dissatisfied with student activism, to withdraw their donations. A large number of universities have struggled to bridge the political and cultural divide between donors, faculty and students. At the University of Texas at Austin, alumni threatened budget cuts over efforts to eliminate those from the university fight songand at the University of Denver, a plan to give President George W. Bush an award attracted donors fury.

But donors rarely attempt to overthrow the leadership so publicly. For many watching this battle, the campaign to wrest control of the university’s direction – its policies, principles and vision for the future – was disturbing.

The donors’ outrage upset pro-Palestinian alumni, who in an Oct. 18 open letter criticized the Penn administration and influential donors for overlooking the treatment of Palestinians in the ensuing violence.

“Reports from UN and WHO experts have highlighted the humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding,” the letter said. “More than a million people have been displaced, with countless lives lost or forever changed.”

University administrators have declined requests for interviews. But Risa L. Lieberwitz, a Cornell professor who researches academic freedom and faculty governance, said pressure from donors can undermine public trust in institutions.

“It is essential that the university remains independent of donor pressure or influence over the content of the work done at the university,” said Ms. Lieberwitz, who is also general counsel of the American Association of University Professors. “The public must be able to trust us to conduct research, teaching or other educational activities without being pressured to take certain positions.”

A campus on the edge

When she was installed as president a year ago, Ms. Magill seemed to have the perfect pedigree. As provost at the University of Virginia, she helped develop a version of the Chicago Principles, which are intended to protect free speech on campus.

“In general, I am very committed to academic freedom,” Ms. Magill had said told The Daily Pennsylvanian, the campus newspaper.

Debates over academic freedom had roiled Penn’s campus. Many students and alumni had demanded action against Amy Wax, the Penn law professor, who has said that black people have “lower cognitive skills” than white people and that the country was “better off” without Asians. The outcome of a faculty hearing on sanctions has not been announced.

It was against this backdrop that Ms. Magill began receiving complaints about the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, which fell on the weekend of September 22 and partly coincided with Yom Kippur. The conference, organized in collaboration with the university’s College of Arts and Sciences, had 120 speakers, many of them literary figures, almost all of them pro-Palestinian.

Mr. Lauder, the cosmetics billionaire whose family name appears on both a dorm room and a business school program, had visited Ms. Magill to ask her to cancel the conference. Similar complaints, some of which did not request cancellations, came from national and local Jewish groups and students at Penn Hillel, the Jewish campus organization.

They named a series of speakers they found objectionable. For example, they noted the presence of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen, an outspoken supporter of the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel known as BDS. And they objected to Roger Waters, the Pink Floyd musician, who had worn a Nazi-style costume during a concert in Berlin, which he said was intended as a statement against fascism.

Despite the protests and anti-Semitic incidents the conference continued on campus.

In an opening speech, Susan Abulhawa, a novelist and conference organizer, criticized “the hysterical racist talk and panic” during the festival.

“We remain proud, unbroken, defiant and honor our ancestors even as we are battered, colonized, exiled, raw, terrorized and humiliated,” she says. said.

Alumni donors are pushing back

One day after the Indigenous Peoples Day post, Ms. Magill issued her first rack condemns Hamas’ attack.

Critics said it was insufficiently powerful.

That same day, Mr. Rowan served a op-ed to The Daily Pennsylvanian, criticizing Ms. Magill for what he called her “moral failure” to condemn the conference. He urged alumni to send in $1 checks and repeated the call on CNBC’s “Squawbox.”

Mr. Rowan is chairman of the board of Wharton, the university’s business school, where many of Penn’s major backers received degrees. The school, which exerts enormous influence over the university’s operations, is responsible for much of Penn’s fundraising and prestige.

Some Wharton alumni have long been dissatisfied with the university’s direction.

Jonathon S. Jacobson, who founded the investment firm HighSage Ventures, wrote in one recent letter to Mrs. Magill that he and his wife had given gifts worth “multiple seven figures” over the years, including significant money for Penn’s basketball program.

But, he wrote, he started cutting back on donations almost two years ago. “The university where I studied and which shaped me is virtually unrecognizable today,” he wrote, “and the values ​​it stands for are not American.”

He added: “You are a product of a deeply distorted system of higher values, in which academic rigor has been replaced by extremist political ideology.”

He also suggested that the university had pressured women on the swim team and their parents not to speak out publicly about Lia Thomas, a transgender athlete.

In a text message, Mr. Jacobson said he did not want to go into detail about why he stopped giving, but added: “I have stopped supporting Penn for many reasons.”

Other Wharton alumni questioned the business school’s direction.

Since starting as dean in 2020, Erika James, the first Black woman to hold the position, has also emphasized diversity, equity and inclusion programs – including the addition of a graduate major on this subject, as well as environmental, social and corporate governance.

That agenda may have driven some alumni away. In his op-ed, Mr. Rowan wrote that the university had “already lost” a $100 million gift, a reference to a donation from Ross Stevens, founder of Stone Ridge Asset Management, to the University of Chicago’s Booth business school.

Dr. Stevens, an alumnus of both Booth and Wharton, signed the open letter.

He would not publicly discuss his $100 million donation to Booth. But two friends confirmed that he intended to give the money to Wharton, but changed his mind because he thought the school was prioritizing DEI over improving the business school’s academic excellence.