This fall, many longtime, deep-pocketed donors –most notably donors to Harvard, Penn, Columbia, and Cornell — publicly declared that they would cease their donations to their alma maters in light of these schools’ despicable responses to Hamas’ attack against Israel and the ensuing protests on their campuses, protests often filled with antisemitic rhetoric.

Of course, the righteous indignation of these donors hit a crescendo when the since-ousted (whoot, whoot!) Harvard and Penn presidents testified before Congress. During that testimony, when asked if calling for the genocide of Jews violated Harvard’s Code of Conduct, Harvard president Claudine Gay replied, with a smirk, “It depends on the context.”

When Penn’s president Liz Magill was asked the same question concerning her school’s Code of Conduct, she said, also with a smirk, “It is a context-dependent decision.” When pressed further, she stated, “If the speech becomes conduct, it can be harassment.” The Congresswoman then retorted, “Conduct meaning committing the act of genocide?”

Ivy Coach Supports Donors Ceasing Donations to Ivies

Ivy Coach, a proudly Jewish-owned business, fully supports these donors who are choosing to withhold their donations to foment change and hold these schools accountable for not protecting their Jewish students, who are experiencing increased incidences of antisemitism on their campuses.

These donors are rightly exerting influence on their alma maters in the hope of creating a better tomorrow for all students, and they’re succeeding. Marc Rowan and fellow Penn alums have forced Penn’s president, Liz Magill, from office. Bill Ackman and fellow Harvard alums have driven out Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, too. After their utterly unacceptable remarks before Congress, neither Magill nor Gay had the right to lead their institutions into the future.

But the Notion that Donations to Ivies Have Fallen Off the Cliff is False

But if you read The New York Post, or at least a piece featuring a self-aggrandizing college counselor with zero experience working in an admissions office who loves to brag about how much he charges in just about every interview, you might believe that donations to Ivy League schools have fallen off a cliff as a result of the aforementioned civil disobedience. You’d be wrong to think so.

In an entirely misleading piece in The New York Post that should never have made print (“Ivy League slashes price of ’donor door’ from $20M to $2M after antisemitism storm“), Rikki Schlott writes, “Now, according to one college counselor, a $2 million check might be the new $20 million. ’If a billionaire has committed $50 million or $100 million a year and now they’re backing out, colleges need to figure out how to fill that gap,’ Command Education founder Christopher Rim told The Post.”

Does that make any sense to our readers? Would an Ivy League school take such drastic action — reducing the “donor door” by 80% because of a couple of months of unsuccessful fundraising? Please. These institutions are hundreds of years old. They don’t make such drastic changes overnight, and this “college counselor” clearly, at least to us, doesn’t have a clue how donations to colleges work. He makes it seem, at least to us, like it’s quid pro quo — you donate and your child gets in. That’s not how it works.

Finally, while we are big supporters of alumni temporarily ceasing donations to these schools that have not protected their Jewish students, these schools know that this too shall pass. It’s why the headline of the piece and the article’s thesis is bogus.

Shame on The New York Post for running an article that is false and misleading!