Big – and most – donors don’t like to give to the Unrestricted category, or General Operations. By definition, their donations come with strings, aka “direction” to schools on how to spend the money. Today, a President’s chief job is to raise money. As long as they can fulfill that role, they remain in charge.
3 Likes
They’re businesses, that happen to provide education as a service.
Listening to providers of capital (their donors) is neither new nor inconsistent with who they are.
1 Like
Listening, yes.
Absolutely, and accepted by the university with those directions (if accepted).
But a far cry from some donors expecting to take over day-to-day decisions, for which there is an organizational structure in place!
2 Likes
Consider the source.
If you read past the rag’s headline, it’s a generic, non-specific, conjecture by an individual.
But it is a compelling headline, which predictably was the intent.
1 Like
sure, but show example where that has happened (other than a school going bk where the Trustees have to take over).
Magill lost her job bcos current donors said that they would not donate in the future. (Their money, their rules.). They did not take over ‘day-to-day decisions’.
1 Like
Or as someone else has said, Harvard is a hedge fund that runs a college as a hobby.
6 Likes
I totally agree with this. Where does this end? The next generation of global wealth sits in the Arab and Asian world. Imagine as they become bigger and bigger donors in the US university system (it has started). Imagine these voices demand to be heard and determine what is or what isn’t free speech. You cannot pick or choose what is free speech. However, there needs to be clear guides as to what is “hate” speech.
2 Likes
That’s already happening on US campuses. The Chinese and the Qatari governments for example have donated millions if not billions of dollars to US campuses to influence viewpoints that benefit them.
3 Likes
That’s really the crux of the matter. Stefanik was able to bully the Presidents bcos they had no answer for what constitutes hate speech against a segment of their students and faculty members. They demonstrated zero common sense by trying to wrap their inactions to the current unrest under a First Amendment banner when everyone in the world knows that they do not allow free speech on their campus. (Nor do they have to, as a private college. Of all people, as a former Law school Dean, Magill could have easily made that point.)
1 Like
Glad that whichever-sources were able to narrow this down by a few orders of magnitude.
Nothing says “fact” more definitely, than by leaving oneself wiggle-room of a factor 1,000? 
Do I hear trillions? Anyone? 
This has been a common theme forever: whenever an opinion isn’t convenient, then students certainly must be getting their “thoughts implanted” by the Russians, Greek Billionaires,… pick your favorite boogie-man of the era! Anything to discredit the next generation to avoid difficult conversations.
The reason college presidents got in hot water is that they couldn’t plausibly suddenly pull the free speech card after having censored all kinds of unwelcome speech previously.
I spoke of this before, and I agree with this analysis by Peter Savodnik of TFP:
The problem here is Magill faced an impossible dilemma that, to be fair, was not of her own making: for years, universities—lots of them, not just Penn—have been chipping away at the freedoms of students and professors. …So the question naturally arises: Why is defending the free expression of Jew-haters suddenly so important when it wasn’t until about five minutes ago?
The bold thing—the right thing—for Magill to have said in response to Rep. Elise Stefanik’s question was: “We’ve been doing things wrong here at Penn for a long time, telling people they can’t say things that someone else might not like. Starting today, we’re done with trigger warnings, safe spaces, and microaggressions, and we’re dismantling the whole DEI complex at Penn, which, let’s face it, is all about censoring wrong-thinkers and actually foments antisemitism on campus. What’s more, I’m putting our students on alert: if you’re uncomfortable with being subjected to speech that upsets you, you should go to school somewhere else. We put a premium on debate and argument at Penn, and that demands free expression.”
Of course, that would have opened Pandora’s box, and it would have demanded a fortitude and moral clarity that Magill, like so many of our so-called leaders in the third decade of the twenty-first century, seem congenitally incapable of. That’s a shame. But it is the only way we return to our republican virtue.
Magill should have held on to her job, and she should have been pressured—by any number of thoughtful alumni or faculty—to liberalize the university she was charged with nurturing. Instead, the mob got its scalp, and Magill is almost certain to be replaced by a functionary who will simply lean into the illiberal, DEI, safetyist complex.
5 Likes
I am not opposed to students being exposed to different viewpoints. One does not necessarily have to agree with all those viewpoints, but I believe students can benefit from hearing different perspectives.
What I have an issue with is tolerating hate speech on campus. Students shouldn’t have to deal with that, and be put in a position where they live in fear. Hate speech has no place in a civil society, much less on a college campus where young men and women are living away from home for the first time.
3 Likes
As a Jewish parent, I’d definitely prefer there was no hate speech on campuses, on a personal level.
But hate speech is legally protected in the US, and thus can’t be banned on public campuses.
The private universities could probably ban it, but that would leave open the question of who will be deciding what is and isn’t hateful.
Even on this board, we are not all in agreement, and we are a relatively homogenous crowd.
1 Like
Yet, certain public schools don’t seem to have any hesitation in unambiguously saying that antisemitic “message, behavior or action” is unacceptable on campus and saying “responsible parties will be held accountable”.
1 Like
Seems they are not actually saying it’s “unacceptable”. Only that they condemn it and are launching an investigation. Which is essentially the same thing the three presidents said.
1 Like
2 Likes
Interesting read in the Chronicle of Higher Ed: https://www.chronicle.com/article/scholars-who-study-the-middle-east-are-afraid-to-speak-out?utm_campaign=che-social-20231212&utm_medium=o-soc&utm_source=tw
1 Like
I read “has no place for” to mean it’s unacceptable.
They didn’t. If they had, we wouldn’t have all this blowback. They failed to say calling for the genocide of Jews is wrong (or at the very least, that it constitutes harassment)
1 Like
It’s billions. If people are concerned about donor influence, these are big donors.
“According to a study published in 2022 by the National Association of Academics in the United States, a study that did not cause too much noise at the time, in the period between 2001 and 2021, precisely after the September 11 attacks, the Qataris donated a whopping $4.7 billion to universities in the United States. The recipients, however, did not report part of the money received, as required by law.”
THE CORRUPTION OF THE AMERICAN MIND:
HOW FOREIGN FUNDING IN U.S. HIGHER
EDUCATION BY AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES,
WIDELY UNDISCLOSED, PREDICTS EROSION OF
DEMOCRATIC NORMS AND ANTISEMITIC
INCIDENTS ON CAMPUS
I listened the entire hearing, and they said things to that effect repeatedly, including phrases like “antisemitism has no place at Harvard”.
But that is not the same thing as “unacceptable” in that it carries a moral vs legal judgement.
The 3-minute bit at the end was a very effective ambush that they walked into because they had no other choice.