Columbia Law Graduate Snubs Alma Mater, Leaves $260 Million to Israel’s Bar Ilan University

Israel’s Bar-Ilan University received its largest ever donation of nearly NIS 1 billion ($260 million) earlier this week, from the estate of an anonymous donor who is reported to be an alumni of Columbia University, according to the New York Post. More on this unexpected gift can be found here: “Columbia University alumnus snubs alma mater, donates $260M to Israeli university,” by Carl Campanile, New York Post, June 3, 2024:

A Columbia alumnus snubbed his alma mater and anonymously donated a staggering $260 million of his fortune to one of Israel’s largest universities.

Bar-Ilan, the public research university that is getting the gift, described the philanthropist as a “North American Jew and graduate of Columbia University who was active in World War II.”

It said Monday that the donor sees Bar-Ilan as “best able to undertake the great task of expanding science-based technological resilience in Israel.”

The Columbia alum’s massive donation to a major academic institution in the Jewish state fueled speculation that he was upset with the anti-Israel and antisemitic protests that have engulfed the uptown Ivy League university amid the Israel-Hamas war.

The donor, while remaining anonymous, wanted it known that he was a Columbia graduate.

“It’s a smack in the face of Columbia. It’s just the beginning,” Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime political consultant, pro-Israel activist and rabbi, told The Post.

Why should anyone, Jewish or non-Jewish, who supports Israel and deplores the antisemitism displayed by pro-Hamas protesters on so many American campuses, and the support given them by too many faculty members, and the pusillanimous behavior of so many university administrators who have failed to punish those who have run amok, or still worse, have agreed to discuss their BDS demands, want to donate or leave a legacy to these morally compromised institutions? Put your money elsewhere — ideally, in Israeli institutions such as Bar Ilan University, or the Technion, or the Israel Museum. Or, if you prefer, give to the American universities that have forthrightly banned pro-Hamas anti-Israel demonstrations, such as Brandeis. Let Harvard and Columbia and MIT and all the other universities that have shown their indifference to these displays of antisemitism suffer the consequences of their behaviors, as former donors choose to put their money elsewhere.

Ken Griffin is one very unhappy donor – there are so many others. He gave $500 million to Harvard a few years ago. Now he has been infuriated by former President of Harvard Claudine Gay’s performance before the Congressional Committee on Education and the Workforce, when she could not give a simple Yes or No to the question of whether the antisemitic protesters in Harvard Yard violated Harvard’s code of conduct. No doubt he wishes he could take back that half-billion donation he gave to Harvard, and give it instead to Brandeis or Bar-Ilan University or the Israel Museum. For any future gifts, he and his fellow billionaire donors should make sure that they will not be contributing to the care and feeding of the antisemitic students now flourishing on too many of our campuses. Moral appeals mean nothing to university administrators. Withholding donations is quite a different matter.