Marc Rowan is the Wharton School of Business chairman at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also my boss' boss' boss' boss' boss or something like that. Apollo Global Management owns the radio company I work for, and Rowan is the CEO of that parent company.
The University of Pennsylvania has pushed Rowan to resign his chairmanship because Rowan does not like how the university has handled the rise of antisemitism on campus. He and other donors are unwilling to write large checks to a school that polices microaggressions but lets students call for eliminating Israel.
Jon Huntsman has notified the University of Pennsylvania that his family foundation will no longer send the millions of dollars the university came to expect.
Financier Bill Ackman wants to know the names of the students joining the antisemitic protests. All of these gentlemen are horrified by these Ivy League and elite institutions, which regularly denounce microaggressions, "anti-trans" speech, and conservatives on campus but let antisemites chant "from river to sea" and "there is only one solution."
I just went through our annual diversity training at my company. The lawyers helpfully told us that we do it not because it covers the company's butt but because it improves the company. We learned about sexual harassment. We learned about amplifying minority voices. We learned about tolerance, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Where was the training against antisemitism? These men and others have funded a bunch of academic institutions and then filled their ranks with the products of those institutions that we now see are fine with the genocide of the Jewish people.
Maybe spending less time telling us the Billy Graham rule is bad and more time telling us it's bad to root for the genocide of the Jewish race might help ferret out the people already on the inside who should not be there.
But there's something else worth noting here that I hope these men pay attention to.
Georgetown University may have mass pro-Hamas rallies, but the University of Georgia does not. Harvard might be seeing its professors and students chanting "Death to Israel," but Mercer University (my alma mater) is not. The University of Pennsylvania may cheer on the murders of Jews, but the University of Florida does not. In fact, Ben Sasse, the president of the University of Florida, led that school's study body in a pro-Israel rally.
Most Americans do not send their children to the institutions of the secular, progressive elite. They send their kids to Covenant College, Berry, Olivet, Texas A&M, LSU, Purdue, Oklahoma, Louisville, the University of Alabama, etc. Sure, there are some protesters and Hamas sympathizers at each of those, but most of the students are there to get a degree and a real job.
These institutions turn out delicate financiers, economists, MBAs, doctors, and lawyers. But they get overlooked by the upper echelons of society who have sent their money to train antisemites at Yale and genocide champions at Harvard. These guys are donating to the University of Pennsylvania, which in turn is producing the future donor class of Hezbollah.
Suppose you really want to change the institutions. In that case, you have to stop hiring from the Ivies when there are plenty of fine, capable, and academically gifted graduates in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) and elsewhere from Middle American families who raised these kids with a work ethic and whose values align with the nation, not the Nazis. Hire the kids who worked part-time at Chick-fil-A instead of the kids whose fathers got them fellowships at liberal elite institutions.
The elite have demanded we give them our attention and respect. They have lost the former and never earned the latter. The donors to these institutions have contributed to the class and income gap while creating a group of indoctrinated, entitled credentials who would send these same donors to their deaths.
The only way to stop it is to force change. The only way to force change is to take away the access, give up the Ivy-covered gatekeeping, and look past the elites to the Americans.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member