A pro-Palestinian banner is spread across Sather Gate at UC Berkeley on March 11. Critics say the campus foments antisemitism.
For better or worse, the genesis of the higher education system in the United States is rooted in the philanthropy of corporate America.
Ezra Cornell, a pioneer in telegraph technology and founder of Western Union, launched Cornell University in 1865, less than three weeks after the Civil War ended. John D. Rockefeller, an oil tycoon, bankrolled the University of Chicago, while on the West Coast, Leland Stanford, a railroad baron and Rockefeller’s contemporary, founded what would become Stanford University. Each titan put a distinctive stamp on their respective university by propelling academic programs that advanced their industries’ cultural norms and America’s around access and inclusion.
But today, the American elite’s connection to higher education is less creator and more political curator. That needs to stop.
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Wealthy college alumni routinely spend fortunes literally and figuratively etching themselves into the fabric of universities — funding the development of new departments and buildings through enormous donation pipelines. According to the National Association of College and University Business Officers, the total endowment for American higher education in 2022 was a staggering $807 billion, much of this the direct result of donations from America’s upper crust. At the same time, these donors have increasingly tried to remake their alma maters in their political images, influencing the direction and ideological temperature of universities.
The bold metamorphosis of donors into campus lobbyists is on full display during the Israel-Palestine conflict, with donors spearheading calls for the resignation of university administrators and professors who are at odds with their pro-Israel stances, as well as calling for employers to rescind job offers for students who have espoused pro-Palestinian views.
Bill Ackman, a prominent hedge fund manager and Harvard University alum, has led the charge. Ackman, known more for his outspoken anti-diversity, equity and inclusion views, was instrumental in marshaling an internal “crusade” to topple Harvard’s first Black president, Claudine Gay, following her ruinous appearance in a congressional hearing on rising antisemitism on American campuses. As part of the mission creep that has popularized identity politics over the last decade, donor activists like Ackman have mounted intense, anti-Democratic lobbying campaigns to refashion the boundaries of campus speech and protest. Many administrations, like Harvard’s, have buckled or quietly retreated from directly affirming staff and student interests, leaving some of us in academia to wonder about the precedent being set for donor activism and how that bodes for efforts to maintain a campus climate that isn’t subject to outside monied influences.
Following Hamas’ attack, one of my faculty peers at UC Berkeley, Steven Davidoff Solomon, a corporate law professor, penned a blistering op-ed in the Wall Street Journal encouraging prospective employers to not “hire (his) antisemitic law students.” Solomon’s screed described ways in which, according to him, UC Berkeley fostered a climate that had “made (Hamas’) attack possible,” a claim effectively backed by various Jewish advocacy groups, including the Brandeis Center, a nonprofit that recently filed a lawsuit against the university for its alleged enabling of “unchecked antisemitism” on campus. In a more subtle protest in March, Ron Hassner, the head of Israel Studies at UC Berkeley, moved a mattress into his office as an informal sit-in to protest the campus’ stance toward its Jewish community.
To this end, despite rabid support from Republicans in Congress who see the likes of Ackman as a powerful avenue to temper liberalism in American higher education, donor activism has often been more bluster than bite. Following Hamas’ attack, Leon Cooperman, a billionaire investor and Columbia Business School alum, merely threatened to nix donations over pro-Palestinian student protests — but ultimately didn’t — saying the students had “s— for brains.” Whatever their purpose, the threats punctuate the authoritative voice that the wealthy can use to push universities into quashing dissent or at least create an undeniable chilling effect on speech. University leadership indirectly acknowledge these vulnerabilities and telegraph the growing pay-to-play expectations. As UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ said in the New Yorker, “Whether it’s alumni or donors or students, staff, faculty — all of them feel with passion that they have an ownership stake, and should be able to have a major voice in positions that the institution takes.”
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Prestigious universities like Harvard, which consistently posts the largest endowment of any university, $50.7 billion in the 2023 fiscal year, amass colossal alumni donations, and frequently find many of its rich alum acting as trustees and sitting on boards that govern its external investments, curricular programming and, more covertly, staff, faculty and student behavior. However, university administrators remain rather tight-lipped about their benefactors and the arrangements that are explicitly (and implicitly) crafted to ensure the ongoing support of benefactors, regularly drawing criticism from faculty, students and government regulators.
What can be done about it?
College is about students and the staff and faculty who are there to support them. College culture shouldn’t be subject to the whimsies and orthodoxies of wealthy outsiders who seek to use their money to become insiders. If administrators allow their universities to become slaves to their financial benefactors, it won’t be long before higher education is as politicized and warped as America’s other key institutions.
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Universities’ messages to current and would-be benefactors, whether their views align with left or right ideologies, need to be clear: If your support is contingent on us violating our ability to run the university as we and our students see fit, take a hike.
Jerel Ezell is an assistant professor of community health Sciences at UC Berkeley.
Big donors want to shape college campuses. Why that needs to stop
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05.04.2024
A pro-Palestinian banner is spread across Sather Gate at UC Berkeley on March 11. Critics say the campus foments antisemitism.
For better or worse, the genesis of the higher education system in the United States is rooted in the philanthropy of corporate America.
Ezra Cornell, a pioneer in telegraph technology and founder of Western Union, launched Cornell University in 1865, less than three weeks after the Civil War ended. John D. Rockefeller, an oil tycoon, bankrolled the University of Chicago, while on the West Coast, Leland Stanford, a railroad baron and Rockefeller’s contemporary, founded what would become Stanford University. Each titan put a distinctive stamp on their respective university by propelling academic programs that advanced their industries’ cultural norms and America’s around access and inclusion.
But today, the American elite’s connection to higher education is less creator and more political curator. That needs to stop.
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
Wealthy college alumni routinely spend fortunes literally and figuratively etching themselves into the fabric of universities — funding the development of new departments and buildings through enormous donation pipelines. According to the National Association of College and University Business Officers, the total endowment for American higher education in 2022 was a staggering $807 billion, much of this the direct result of donations from America’s upper crust. At the same time, these donors have increasingly tried to remake their alma maters in their political images, influencing the direction and........
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