Donor influence plays a key role in this. Robert Kraft, owner of the US football team the New England Patriots, a major donor to Columbia University, pulled his financial support “over the treatment of Jewish students and faculty during pro-Palestinian protests at the campus.” And Bill Ackman, hedge fund billionaire, led the campaign to oust the first Black woman president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay, when he was unsatisfied by her handling of campus tensions over the genocide. As Fahad Ahmad and Adam Saifer write, “When university administrators accede to donor demands, they punish students for enacting the core values and principles their institutions profess.” The influence of private philanthropy at universities has been on the rise and “poses a grave risk to free inquiry, critical thinking and the democratic ideals of universities.” Zionist groups are promoting McCarthy-like criminalization of Palestinians and their allies, furthering anti-Palestinian racism—and campus leaders are enabling it.

XREF: Connects to broader phenomena of billionaire influence over institutions—think Epstein-MIT, Gates philanthropy shaping policy, and the Koch network in academia. SEED: Angles into how mega-donor withdrawal is weaponized as de facto veto power over controversial speech, and what universities could structurally do to buffer endowment governance.

Evelyn Alsultany, Antisemitism and Islamophob…, loc. 29