Time for Billionaire Donors to Face Reality By Robert Weissberg
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/time_for_billionaire_donors_to_face_reality.html
An important repercussion of the recent campus anti-Israel/pro-Hamas rallies is that major university donors, many of whom are Jewish, say that they are re-thinking their continued support of their alma mater.
The billionaire Ronald Lauder has threatened to end his donations to the University of Pennsylvania. Fellow Penn alum, Marc Rowan, who has donated some $50 million recently asked fellow mega donors “to close their checkbooks.” TV producer Dick Wolf, another Penn alum, joined this chorus while the Huntsman family has already shut its checkbook. Four thousand donors just signed a letter denouncing Penn’s support of anti-Semitism. Nor are these Penn donors unusual as billionaires at other schools have finally awoken from their slumber.
Can these aroused financial titans root out anti-Semitism? No doubt, the closed checkbooks will alarm top administrators who will promise “steps will be taken,” but, sadly, matters will not change, rhetoric aside.
No university will de-fund anti-Israel organizations since this generosity for student groups is a long-standing policy and administrators cannot anticipate what campus groups will do next.
Among the 30 Harvard groups denouncing Israel (listed here) were the Harvard Divinity School Muslim Association, The Harvard Jews for Liberation and, oddly, the Design Students Society, among others that, technically, have nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Moreover, rabid anti-Semites can seize control over any campus groups just by showing up and then voting for a toxic statement in the group’s name regardless of the membership.
Nor can university administrators force faculty members to cleanse their teaching of anything that might be anti-Jewish. Anti-Semites always find ways to insert their message and tenure and academic freedom are formidable obstacles to what the outraged mega donor demands.
Likewise, universities cannot control their “brand” beyond the campus. A few Harvard students can easily assemble in a nearby park and claim to “speak for Harvard students” and say the most outlandish things, all covered by the mass media, and the university is powerless to silence them. Nobody listens when a Harvard dean eventually explains that “the protestors do not speak for the Harvard community/”
This is unwelcome news for anxious mega-donors, but eliminating campus anti-Semitism is not their biggest worry. More serious is the burgeoning hostility on campus to the culture that allowed these billionaires to become billionaires. Hatred toward Israel is just a symptom of the malady plaguing American higher education. It is this larger battle that billionaires should address when threatening to close their checkbook.
Perhaps the foremost malaise that should worry these alarmed billionaires is the widespread disdain for capitalism as if making money must be subordinated to achieving social and/or racial justice. Consider how Disney currently makes movies directed at children such as Strange World and Lightyear that feature homosexual plots that are financial disasters. Disney’s animated Baymax portrays a menstruating transgendered man. That these movies have lost billions is no surprise. Obviously, many of today’s college-educated Disney executives don’t believe that business exists to enrich shareholders.
Then there’s the rejection of merit in favor of physical traits or sexual identity that now permeates today’s campuses. That is, don’t hire the most competent; instead hire those checking the most boxes, and this often results in hiring incompetents. And while identity politics may have begun as an idea in some obscure sociology course, it now permeates the economy. According to Bloomberg News, during one recent period, of all those hired by corporate America, 94% of the positions went to people of color (Hispanic, Asian and Black). Yes, whites still occupy the top rungs of corporate America, but this situation will be fleeting as the pressure for “diversity” grows relentlessly thanks to made-in-the-academy ideas.
Identity politics can be costly. As Charles Murray notes in his Facing Reality (pp. 77-8) in every job classification, whites have higher IQ’s than blacks including the most demanding jobs such as accountants and lawyers. So, when Ron Lauder’s firms recruit their next executives, they are unlikely to hire the best and the brightest thanks to an idea originally concocted in the university.
Further add how male virtues such as aggressiveness, competitiveness, risk-taking, honor, courage and tenacity have been demonized in today’s academy in favor of such traits more associated with women such as compassion and social sensitivity. The phrase, “Toxic Masculinity ” captures this mentality, and one health oriented website told of “The Dangerous Effects of Toxic Masculinity.” Significantly, these traits are not entirely biologically determined, and a corporation might prefer men who embody “feminine” traits and suffer the consequences in the highly competitive business world.
Earning billions also requires a commitment to objective, demonstrable truth. Who wants a marketing department with employees who insist that, as per Sociology 101, reality is socially constructed, so fiddling with language is tantamount to altering reality. Yes, it may be able to convince gullible undergraduates that the patriarchy stigmatizes obese women as “not the physical ideal” but Victoria’s Secret recently learned that this gobbledygook can be costly. Specifically, they dropped their marketing campaign featuring obese women (and trans men) when sales declined from $7.5 billion to $6.2. In other words, “beauty” is not as malleable as campus versions of “male” and “female.”
Lastly, the academy’s emphasis of oppression, grievances and identity are incompatible with the rule of law, and capitalism cannot operate without the rule of law. Imagine a world where justice depends on the physical traits of those involved and who is the most oppressed? Here perpetrators such as those in the post-Geroge Floyd murder riots may go free if they can prove that were members of historically marginalized communities while victims are ignored if belonging to a privileged class. Yet this dystopic legal system is what many students and their professors want.
Clearly, these suddenly awakened billionaires have long funded their own demise by pouring billions into schools that indoctrinate students in values that would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. How many recent college graduates, including some at Penn, are interested in making Ron Lauder even richer? The opposite may be true—they would love to impoverish Ron and his fellow university benefactors. Just ask Disney or Anheuser Busch about what happens when ideologues make company decisions. No doubt, if the HR department were asked how these anti-capitalist employees were hired to produce movies or design beer cans, the HR people will say, “they all graduated from top colleges.”
Being a mega-donor to an elite college is psychologically rewarding, but the long-term survival of their enterprises counsels seeking out alternatives for their largess. Fortunately, the current roster of elite schools is not fixed in stone. Stanford and the University of Chicago were founded by billionaires at the end of the 19th century, and the formula is hardly lost. All billionaires know that at some point, one cuts one’s losses and invests elsewhere. Perhaps Ron Lauder should read up on Leland Stanford Jr. and John D. Rockefeller (who founded today’s University of Chicago) to learn about college start-ups. It is the same logic that made them billionaires—look for fresh opportunities where others see nothing and invest. Close the checkbooks, pack the suitcase, and take your millions elsewhere.
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