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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28729 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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(can move to the Israel/Palestine thread, but thought I'd post here as it's not geopolitics)

Looks like donors of elite schools are starting to pause their donations to schools due to the Israel/Palestine situation.

Well, rather, by the reaction and statements from some students at those schools, combined with the lack of reaction/statement by the school presidents condemning the initial Hamas attack. It seems donors, like Ken Griffin, are either pressuring the school to change tact, or stopping donations altogether.

Just today, apparently [some Jewish students at Cooper Union] were blocked in a library due to a pro-Palestine/anti-Israel rally](https://twitter.com/stopantisemites/status/1717300476524322969?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ). Not sure why the library only had Jewish students (Hillel meeting?), but seems bad if true.

George Washington Uni. got pro-Hamas projections saying things like "glory to our martyrs" (!!) on school buildings (ironically with donors like "Gelman" right underneath the projections). Protests that shout "from the river to the sea" all over every elite school, from Brown to NYU to UCLA, you name it. And on and on...

Social media wasn't that developed, and I wasn't paying attention, last time the large Israel/Palestine hostage situation happened in 2014, or the situation in 2008. Was it always been like this, pro-Hamas/anti-Israel/ and I just didn't notice? Or is it noticeably larger now, more organized, more tolerated? It's not just US either, it's also in UK, it's in Berlin and Vienna and Paris. Obviously there's big protests in Jordan or whatever, as they are closer and have millions of Palestinians, so I'd expect protests there. But it almost seems kind of shocking how brazen many people are, in NYC!?

Seems like influential folks, even sjw/leftist-friendly (?) youtubers, are realizing the changing cultural winds, and perhaps political winds downstream.

The donors' using their money to cause change is not new, but seems like there is urgency from them to change some of the culture in universities. Will this actually change things, though? My bet is no, Griffin's $300mil will not change how Harvard students think and say. What do you guys think?

edit:

This was an interesting thing, that I was trying to but failing to reference/get at:

In the 1960s, the radical left and black militants engaged in terrorism and mass violence for several years. During that period, a disproportionate amount of money and leadership on the left came from Jews and Jewish organizations. Then the Panthers took the movement by storm and imposed a Third World, anti-imperialist focus on the left, which turned hard against Israel after the Six Day War in ‘67. The Panthers’ anti-Zionism bled over into plain anti-Semitism, and many disillusioned Jews began to back away from the movement. Then, in ‘69, black militants in NYC picked a fight w/the mostly Jewish NYC teachers’ union, and the virulent antisemitism that had been just beneath the surface burst out into the open. The Jewish Defense League was actually formed in the aftermath of the conflict, to protect and retaliate on behalf of Jews who were being harassed and attacked by black militants.

The loss of Jewish support was the end of the ‘60s radical left as a serious movement, and the long march on the institutions began. Now that it’s had a half decade to regroup, it’s back on the streets causing mayhem. As before, Jewish organizers and groups played a disproportionate leadership role w/BLM, campus radicals, and other militant groups, and as before, the movement has turned against Israel and Jews more generally. If the rest of the cycle repeats, turning against the Jews will mark the beginning of the end of this round of left wing madness…

Hopefully we all learn a more lasting lesson this time.

Harvard’s endowment is huge, and everyone could stop donating right now and Harvard wouldn’t notice. If Griffin or Ackman or whatever Twitter busybody billionaire thinks Harvard cares about them, or even notices who they are, they are seriously high on their own supply.

There’s also a less public issue where a lot of these donations are shadily (though not-publicly) invested via the endowment management company into the donors’ PE or VC or hedge funds at exorbitant fees (for a hint of this, check out the composition of Stanford’s board) so their pulling out isn’t costless from the donor’s perspective.

i got the sense that majority of endowment growth is through investments, like how David Swensen ran the Yale endowment, or how much money Stanford makes from VC funds.

This is also true of public pensions, like CALPERS, or Ontario teachers union, or any of these big money funds that need to grow (though VC usually is not like, 50% of their investments).

Coupled with how well Griffin's Citadel grows the pile, it makes sense to invest in them (if harvard does invest in citadel funds - im not sure)

If it’s already big then yes most of the growth is through growth of the investments. Despite what they say, and despite a lot of smoothing and fudging, VC/PE/hedge funds make money when equity markets go up and lose money when equity markets go down, so investing into that stuff isn’t really a secret sauce.

On the other hand, university endowments are a huge slice of business for these funds, so Harvard & similar pulling out of Pershing Square is way way worse for Pershing Square than Bill Ackman taking his (relatively small) ball and going home is bad for Harvard.

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