Billionaire Ronald Lauder, a powerful financier of the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), an important private higher education institution in the USA, is threatening to cut donations if there is not more to combat anti-Semitism, according to the report. CNN .
The threat from Lauder, one of the heirs of cosmetics company Estée Lauder, marks the latest fallout from donors and alumni alarmed by a Palestinian literary festival held on campus last month, before Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel.
Even before the Palestine Writes Festival began, UPenn leaders recognized that it would include speakers with a history of making anti-Semitic comments.
“The conference has placed a deep stain on Penn’s reputation that will take a long time to repair,” Lauder wrote to UPenn President Liz Magill on Monday in a letter obtained by CNN .
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“You are forcing me to re-examine my financial support in the absence of satisfactory measures to address anti-Semitism at the university,” Lauder wrote.
The Palestine Writes festival created a backlash that saw prominent donors, including billionaire Marc Rowan and former US ambassador Jon Huntsman, pledge to cut funding.
Rowan called for Magill’s resignation and administrator Vahan Gureghian resigned late last week.
Lauder said he had two people taking photos at the Palestine Writes festival and two more who listened to the speakers, who were “anti-Semitic and viscerally anti-Israel.”
Organizers of the Palestine Writes festival denied that it espoused anti-Semitism, according to UPenn’s student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian.
“Alumni are important members of the Penn community. I hear your anger, pain and frustration and I am taking steps to make it clear that I am, and Penn is, emphatically against the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel and against anti-Semitism,” Magill said in a statement on Tuesday (17).
“As a university, we support and encourage the free exchange of ideas, along with a commitment to the safety of our community and the values we share and work to promote,” Magill said.
“Penn has a moral responsibility to combat anti-Semitism and to educate our community to recognize and reject hate in all its forms. I said we should have communicated more quickly and widely about our position, but let there be no doubt that we are firm in our beliefs.”
Lauder, whose fortune is estimated at $4.6 billion, according to Forbes, serves as president of the World Jewish Congress, an organization that aims to protect Jewish communities around the world from discrimination.
“I have spent the last 40 years of my life fighting anti-Semitism around the world and never in my wildest imagination did I think I would have to fight it at my university, at my alma mater and at my family’s alma mater,” Lauder wrote in the letter.
Lauder, who served as U.S. ambassador to Austria in the 1980s, graduated from UPenn and helped found the Lauder Institute, a Wharton business program named after his father.
Lauder said he made a “special trip” to Philadelphia to meet with Magill and persuade her to cancel the Palestine Writes festival and made two subsequent phone calls in that effort.
“The timing of this event could not have been worse,” he wrote.
In his letter, Lauder argued that the event organizers came “almost exclusively” from the Department of Arts and Sciences and demanded that action be taken.
“Let me be as clear as possible: I do not want any of the Lauder Institute students, the best and brightest at your university, to be taught by any of the instructors who were involved in or supported this event,” Lauder wrote. “We know who they are and what they did.”
Magill, president of UPenn, admitted over the weekend that the response to the Palestine Writings Literature Festival was inadequate.
“While we communicated, we should have acted more quickly to share our position strongly and more broadly with the commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” Magill said in a statement Sunday.
The UPenn leader said she knows how “painful the presence of these speakers” on campus was for the Jewish community, especially during the holiest time of the Jewish year.
“The University has not, and emphatically does not, endorse these speakers or their views,” Magill said.
“I want to leave no doubt about where I am. This University and I are horrified and condemn Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel and its violent atrocities against civilians,” Magill said.
“There is no justification – none – for these heinous attacks, which have consumed the region and are inciting violence in other parts of the world.”
Palestine Writes describes itself as “the only North American literature festival dedicated to celebrating and promoting the cultural productions of Palestinian writers and artists.”
An organizer told CNN that the festival was intended to celebrate Palestinian culture and literature.
“We wanted to honor our ancestors, celebrate our heritage. Discuss our books, talk about our situation. Talking about resistance, talking about politics and power and culture and music and books and food and all these things,” Susan Abulhawa, executive director of the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, told CNN .
Abulhawa, an author who is not affiliated with UPenn, described the event as “glorious” and “so beautiful people cried.”
(Ramishah Maruf contributed to this text)
Source: CNN Brasil
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