A nonprofit started by Victoria’s Secret founder Leslie Wexner is the latest to cut ties with Harvard — saying it was “sickened” with the Ivy League school’s “dismal failure” to condemn the mass slaughter of Israelis by Hamas terrorists.
The Wexner Foundation wrote to Harvard’s board Monday to “formally ending its financial support” after the school also failed to condemn a statement by more than 30 student groups that held Israel “entirely responsible” for the violence.
“We are stunned and sickened by the dismal failure of Harvard’s leadership to take a clear and unequivocal stance against the barbaric murders of innocent Israeli civilians,” wrote the leadership of the nonprofit started by Wexner and his wife Abigail.
It left Israeli students feeling “abandoned” at the school — especially when 34 student groups quickly issued a statement “holding Israel entirely responsible for the violent terror attack on its own citizens,” stated the letter shared by StopAntisemitism.
“Harvard’s leadership were indeed tiptoeing, equivocating, and we, like former Harvard President Larry Summers cannot ‘fathom the administration’s failure to disassociate the university and condemn the statement’ swiftly,” the foundation wrote.
“That should not have been that hard.”
“In the absence of this clear moral stand, we have determined that the Harvard Kennedy School and the Wexner Foundation are no longer compatible partners,” the letter stated.
“Our core values and those of Harvard no longer align.”
The foundation pulled out soon after Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer and his wife, Batia, also resigned from the executive board of Harvard Kennedy School over similar anger at the lackluster response.
In response to the latest letter, a spokesperson for the school told CNN: “We are grateful to the Wexner Foundation for its very long-standing support of student scholarships.”
The spokesperson also cited President Claudine Gay’s video statement last week, in which she desperately tried to quiet the criticism — but failed to mention the more than 30 student organizations that co-signed the statement by the school’s Palestine Solidarity Committee.
In the video, Gay said the Ivy League school “embraces a commitment to free expression.”
“That commitment extends even to views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous,” Gay said.
“We do not punish or sanction people for expressing such views, but that is a far cry from endorsing them.”
“We can fan the flames of division and hatred that are roiling the world,” Gay said in the clip. “Or we can try to be a force for something different and better.”
Gay was forced to issue the statement following backlash from executives for what they deemed to be a lackluster response to the student groups’ statement.
After it was published, former university president Larry Summers demanded that Harvard administrators condemn the statement signed by the student organizations.
“Why can’t we find anything approaching the moral clarity of Harvard statements after George Floyd’s death or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when terrorists kill, rape, and take hostage hundreds of Israelis attending a music festival?” he asked.
Bill Ackman, the founder of multibillion-dollar hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, also demanded that Harvard administrators release a list of the names of students whose groups co-signed the letter.
He enlisted the support of at least a dozen business executives who vowed to deny employment opportunities to the students whose groups were signatories to the letter.