Former U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman slammed the University of Pennsylvania’s response to the ongoing fighting between Israel and Hamas, and pledged to stop giving money to the institution where he and his family have been prominent donors.
“To the outsider, it appears that Penn has become deeply adrift in ways that make it almost unrecognizable,” Huntsman, who graduated from the university in 1987, wrote to the school’s president, Liz Magill, according to an email obtained by the student newspaper The Daily Pennsylvanian.
The former Utah governor told Magill that the Huntsman Foundation “will close its checkbook on all future giving to Penn,” ending years of giving that, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian, has amounted to tens of millions of dollars.
Huntsman did not immediately respond to POLITICO's request for comment.
The controversy on campus began before the Oct. 7 Hamas-led surprise attack on Israel. In September, the school hosted the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, a multiday event that included some speakers who had a history of making antisemitic remarks. The event received pushback from prominent donors and trustees at the university, including billionaire Marc Rowan and “Law & Order” creator Dick Wolf.
Administrators including Magill issued a statement condemning antisemitism ahead of the event.
“While the Festival will feature more than 100 speakers, many have raised deep concerns about several speakers who have a documented and troubling history of engaging in antisemitism by speaking and acting in ways that denigrate Jewish people. We unequivocally — and emphatically — condemn antisemitism as antithetical to our institutional values,” the administrators wrote at the time.
In the days following the Oct. 7 attack, Magill and Penn’s Provost John L. Jackson Jr. condemned the assault as “abhorrent.”
“Many members of our community are hurting right now. Our thoughts are especially with those grieving the loss of loved ones or facing grave uncertainty about the safety of their families and friends,” the pair wrote.
That didn’t stop Huntsman from criticizing what he said was the university’s “silence” on the issue.
“The University’s silence in the face of reprehensible and historic Hamas evil against the people of Israel (when the only response should be outright condemnation) is a new low. Silence is antisemitism,” Huntsman wrote in the email.
In response to the backlash over the initial statement, and the resignation of one of the university's trustees, Vahan Gureghian — who said in his resignation that the school community had been "failed by an embrace of antisemitism," according to CNN — Magill followed up with an email addressed to members of the Penn community on Sunday morning that more explicitly condemned Hamas.
“The University has made public statements denouncing acts of antisemitism on our campus and the terrorist attacks in Israel,” Magill wrote. “I want to leave no doubt about where I stand. I, and this University, are horrified by and condemn Hamas’s terrorist assault on Israel and their violent atrocities against civilians. There is no justification—none—for these heinous attacks, which have consumed the region and are inciting violence in other parts of the world.”
The University of Pennsylvania is one of several elite universities across the country mired in controversy over leaders' responses to the current fighting in the Middle East. Students, alumni and supporters at Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford, among other schools, have been bitterly divided by the fighting.
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