Perhaps my good friend Christine Flowers didn’t get to cancel these people herself, but it does show that while we all have our freedom of speech, other people have a freedom to listen, and some people might not like what you have to say!

Harvard students scramble to take back support for letter attacking Israel as some CEOs look to blacklist them

By Melissa Koenig | Wednesday, October 11, 2023 | 2:34 PM EDT

A flurry of Harvard University students and groups are desperately trying to backtrack on their support of a letter blaming Israel for the mass slaughter of its own people by Hamas terrorists — as some business titans seek to blacklist them from future jobs.

Four of the initial 34 student organizations attached to the inflammatory statement have already withdrawn their support — while board members of other groups have quit to distance themselves.

Late Tuesday, 17 other Harvard groups joined around 500 faculty and staff and 3,000 others in signing a counter-statement attacking the other groups’ letter as “completely wrong and deeply offensive,” according to the campus paper, the Harvard Crimson.

A third letter from nearly 160 faculty members also ripped Harvard’s response to the scandal, writing that it “can be seen as nothing less than condoning the mass murder of civilians based only on their nationality.”

Others in groups supporting the initial letter — which held “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” — quit while distancing themselves from any involvement.

There’s more at the original, and the New York Post does not have a paywall to block you. 🙂

This was started by Bill Ackman, a graduate of Harvard University himself, is the founder of the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, and has a personal net worth of $3.5 billion; Mr Ackman is married to Neri Oxman, an Israeli-born professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One would have thought that the extremely intelligent students who won admission to Hahvahd would have thought, ‘Hey, wait a minute, some of the most important business leaders in the biggest financial center in America, just might be Jewish or have family who are Jewish.’

It’s like yelling, “Fire!” in a crowded theater: the law doesn’t prevent you from entering the theater, but you can be held accountable for the consequences of your speech if disruption, panic, or injury result. The Harvard students exercised their freedom of speech, as is protected by law . . . and some potential employers listened to them.

The old saw, when people tell you who they are, believe them, is proving itself true every day!

And another Ivy League college is learning the lesson:

Penn donor who gave $50 million calls for university leaders to resign over ‘embrace of antisemitism’

Marc Rowan, a Wharton graduate and CEO of Apollo Global Management in New York, called on alumni and supporters to “close their checkbooks” until President Liz Magill and Chairman Scott Bok step down.

by Susan Snyder | Thursday, October 12, 2023 | 2:16 PM EDT

A heavyweight Penn donor who chairs Wharton’s board of advisors has asked that Penn’s president and its board chair resign after their handling last month of the Palestine Writes festival, which he said was emblematic of their “embrace of antisemitism.”

Marc Rowan, a Wharton graduate and CEO of Apollo Global Management based in New York, called on alumni and supporters to “close their checkbooks” until President Liz Magill and Chairman Scott L. Bok step down, he wrote in a letter published online Wednesday.

Soon after, alumni Dick Wolf — the namesake of the Wolf Humanities Center at Penn — endorsed Rowan’s call for alumni to cease donations until Magill and Bok resign.

“Sadly, their leadership has inadequately represented the ideals and values of our university and they should be held to account,” Dick Wolf wrote in a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn’s student newspaper.

The money line came in the last paragraph:

The DP (Daily Pennsylvanian) reported in 2018 that Rowan gave $50 million to Wharton, at the time the largest single gift to the school.

The University of Pennsylvania is a private college, which the school estimating a cost of attendance, not including housing — it’s listed as ‘living with family’ — of $73,494 per academic year.

It’s worth pointing out here that UPenn is also the school which allowed Will Thomas to participate on the women’s swimming team, and I saw no stories of donors withholding money, so this isn’t somehow about us evil reich-wing conservatives. American Jews tend to vote heavily Democratic, and are mostly politically liberal. The article noted that the four protesting trustees are all Jewish.

Well, American Jews, with their culture of seeking higher education and working hard in school and at their jobs, tend to be wealthier than Americans as a whole, and certainly wealthier than Muslim immigrants, and it only makes sense that donors to universities are going to be more heavily Jewish than the population as a whole. But what we need are not just Jews putting their money where their mouths are, but decent Americans of all faiths, saying not just no, but Hell no to the anti-Semites and the supporters of Hamas.

“It is time for the trustees to begin moving UPenn in a new direction,” Rowan wrote. “Join me and many others who love UPenn by sending UPenn $1 in place of your normal, discretionary contribution so that no one misses the point.” . . . .

Rowan also said during the CNBC interview that on Wednesday “his text blew up” with people sending him photocopies of a $1 check to Penn. He also said that “we’ve already seen $150 million that would have come to the university move away from the university.”

Emilio Bassini, a Penn alum who had signed the earlier alumni letter, said Penn’s handling of the festival “certainly will” affect his future giving, and he expects others will either decrease or stop altogether.

In response to that letter, Bok had said the trustees “are reflecting on the range of views expressed by various members of our community.”

Another old saw: “Money talks, and [bovine feces] walks.” I should note here that I did not change any of the direct quotes from The Philadelphia Inquirer article, but I added two of the hyperlinks embedded therein.

Chairman Bok, net worth $152 million, might have put his foot in his mouth when he stated that the Board of Trustees “are reflecting on the range of views expressed by various members of our community,” because he has just said that the “range of views expressed by various members of our community” includes rather blatant anti-Semitism.

You know, I get it: there are a lot of not-very-smart Americans, and Westerners in general, who have sympathy for the plight of the poor, poor Arabs living in the ‘Palestinian’ areas, but there is no excuse, none at all, for what those Arabs are doing. I’ve said it before: Israel made a huge mistake by not expelling every last Arab from the areas conquered in the Six Day War of 1967, and the Israelis have been paying the price for that mistake ever since. But I also have zero sympathy for the ‘Palestinians’ who have rejected every attempt at a peaceful settlement.